Ellen S. Friedell is a founder of Reaching Agreement and FFG Law.  She is an attorney with extensive business, corporate, litigation and alternative dispute resolution experience, serving as a mediator and arbitrator in a wide variety of matters.  She has been described as combining “a quiet persistence and tenacious enthusiasm” and is especially effective in creative problem solving and dealing with complex and highly emotional situations.

She was previously Associate General Counsel for Rohm and Haas Company, a Fortune 500 multinational chemical company, where she was responsible for the company’s litigation worldwide as well as regulatory and employment law.

Ms. Friedell focused on high-stakes, complex litigation and investigations in many areas including environmental, insurance, class actions, contracts and other business disputes, mass tort, antitrust, asbestos, employment, criminal, products liability and personal injury.   She also served as a negotiator regarding environmental and other federal legislation, and led multi-disciplinary, diverse teams.

She began her legal career as a trial attorney with the United States Civil Aeronautics Board and the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Ms. Friedell is a 1970 graduate of Brandeis University, with a B.A. magna cum laude with honors in psychology, and received a J.D. from American University’s Washington College of Law in 1973, where she was Associate Editor of the Law Review.  She completed advanced training in mediation at the Center for Dispute Settlement in Washington, D.C.

She serves as a Judge Pro Tempore and as an arbitrator in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas and also as an arbitrator in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

Ms. Friedell is the Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Settlement Music School and received a Philadelphia Business Journal 2016 Outstanding Business Directors Award for her service.  She is the Vice-Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Public Interest Law Center and a Co-Chair of the Philadelphia Bar Association’s Alternative Dispute Resolution Committee.  She has represented individuals under the Philadelphia Volunteers for the Indigent Program.

She is a member of the bar of Pennsylvania with an AV® Preeminate™ rating from Martindale & Hubbell, its highest rating.