• Insurance Company: 23 years.
  Legal Department: 23 years. Senior Vice President and Deputy General Counsel
• Reinsurance Company: 23 years.
  Legal Department: 23 years. Senior Vice President & Deputy General Counsel
• Law Firm (Insurance/Reinsurance Practice): 4 years.
  Associate: 4 years. complex litigation boutique
• Independent/Other Relevant Experience: 26 years.
  Other : 13 years. senior trial attorney US government, clinical faculty University Of Chicago Law School, trial attorney, federal agency
  Independent/Unaffiliated Arbitrator, Umpire and/or Mediator: 13 years. Arbitrator since January, 2008

Insurance vs. Reinsurance: 66/33%
Treaty vs. Facultative Reinsurance: 95/5%
Former Insurance or Reinsurance Company Officer
Former Insurance or Reinsurance Company Director

• Number of Mediations
  As Counsel: involved in numerous arbitrations and mediations as inside counsel

Workshops, as Trainee: 1; March 2008

Ethics Training, as Trainee: 1; August 2009; November 2011

ARIAS Conference Faculty: 2; Fall 2009, Spring 2011, Spring 2015, Fall 2015, Fall 2016 conference

Other Approved Training:

Fall 2010 Educational Seminar - FACULTY;
March 2013 Educational Seminar - FACULTY
February 2015 webinar, April 2015 webinar, February 2016 webinar, July 2016 webinar, April 2017 webinar

Number of Arbitrations

As an Arbitrator: 39

As an Umpire: 4

Tom Stillman is a seasoned litigator specializing in complex litigation, including large class actions of which he has handled a substantial number. Tom spent the bulk of his career, 23 years, in charge of Corporate Litigation at the CNA Insurance Companies from which he retired as Senior Vice President and Deputy General Counsel. He served as an officer of both CNA’s property/casualty and life/health companies.

Tom also practiced as a clinical faculty member at a top-ranked law school, an associate in a business litigation boutique, a senior federal trial attorney handling class actions and as a pro bono volunteer with community organizations. Upon his retirement from CNA, Tom returned to teaching
as an adjunct professor of law, teaching trial practice, and began a second career as an arbitrator concentrating in reinsurance and business problems of insurance companies.

Having represented both plaintiffs and defendants, Tom has the ability to see both sides of a dispute and has won praise from clients as a creative and practical advocate. As only an inhouse litigator can be, Tom has the advantage of having been immersed in the business of his company and
often in the room where important decisions were made. He believes that the adage “follow the money” is an important analytical tool in answering the question: ”What was really going on” in a business dispute.

While at CNA Tom and his staff represented the company in a full gamut of cases, literally from antitrust to zoning. Many of these cases involved high dollar amounts and most of them were non routine. He also filled in as leader of CNA’s in-house coverage lawyers.

In terms of reinsurance, CNA participated as a cedant and a reinsurer in the US and London markets, so Tom has had experience representing both. One of his major responsibilities was presiding over the years-long legal aftermath of the collapse of CNA’s London reinsurance business that spawned more than 40 high dollar arbitrations in the U.S. and London. The capstone of Tom’s reinsurance practice was leading a 3 month arbitration hearing with the company’s largest cedant with hundreds of millions of dollars, if not more, at stake.

During his time as a company executive or subsequently as an independent arbitrator, among the reinsurance disputes with which Tom has dealt, are ones concerning contract wording and interpretation, allocation, bad faith, fraud and misrepresentation, follow the fortunes/settlements, claim handling, underwriting, finite reinsurance, inuring reinsurance, renewal rates, pools, mga’s, tpa’s, captives, agents and brokers.

A graduate, cum laude, of Syracuse University and the University Of Chicago Law School, Tom is a current member of the Illinois Bar, a retired member of the Trial Bar, the General Bar of the Northern District Of Illinois and the 7th Circuit. He is a member of the Chicago Bar Association and the American Bar Association and former Vice-Chair of its Insurance Law Committee of the Antitrust section.