Loretta has over 40 years’ experience litigating complex commercial, construction, and employment disputes; and in the last 20, serving as an arbitrator or mediator in over 300 cases. Formerly a Partner at Meltzer, Lippe, Goldstein & Breitstone, LLP and Chair of the firm’s Alternative Dispute Resolution Practice Group, her experience most often involved disputes in commercial, contract, insurance, intellectual property, trade secrets, securities, employment, business ownership, real property, and commercial, industrial and residential construction matters and domestic and international arbitration and mediation. She has been recognized in the 2026 edition of Best Lawyers in America in Arbitration, became a Fellow of the elite College of Commercial Arbitrators in 2024, was named by Long Island Business News as one of the Top 50 Business Women in 2005 and 2013, “Who’s Who” in Women Professional Services in 2010 and 2021, and Long Island Power Woman in Business in 2018. She is the Chair-Elect of the Dispute Resolution Section of the New York State Bar Association. She was invited by the AAA to join its arbitration panels in 2005 and soon after trained as a mediator in 2011, serving the AAA and Commercial Division Courts in many New York counties. Read on as Gastwirth discusses her approach to mediation. She is also one of the featured panelist trainers of our AI Arbitrator. She discusses her experience with the tool.
Q. What surprised you most when you first worked with the AI Arbitrator?
What has surprised me the most about working with the AI Arbitrator has been its speed in analyzing materials.
Q. Where did your judgment matter most in shaping or refining the outcome?
My review of the actual documents gave me more perspective into the claims, which may have differed from the summary analysis offered by the AI system.
Q. What do you think people misunderstand most about AI-led arbitration?
That an arbitrator is actually reviewing the entirety of the submissions and not just depending on the AI summaries or analysis.
Q. What role do you see AI-assisted decision-making playing in the future of arbitration and dispute resolution?
I think the system will be very helpful to parties in understanding the potential outcomes and strengths and weaknesses of their case.