Randall Kiser is the principal analyst at DecisionSet®, a decision services company located in Palo Alto, California. He designs DecisionSet®'s quantitative models and has worked with attorneys, litigants, insurers, and advisors in assessing risks and evaluating litigation alternatives.

Randall Kiser's new book on attorney-litigant decision making, "Beyond Right and Wrong: The Power of Effective Decision Making for Attorneys and Clients," will be published in Winter 2009. Springer, the world's leading scientific publisher, will publish the book in cooperation with Springer Science + Business Media LLC New York, Springer-Verlag GmbH Berlin Heidelberg. and Springer Japan KK. The book evaluates the effectiveness of attorney-litigant decisions, discusses the psychological and institutional factors that may contribute to ineffective decision making, explains the legal malpractice and disciplinary consequences of inadequate settlement counseling and negotiations, and shows how attorneys, clients and law firms can improve the quality of their decision making. The book is available for pre-order through Barnes & Noble, Springer and Amazon.

Mr. Kiser is the lead author of the recent article, "Let's Not Make a Deal: An Empirical Study of Decision Making in Unsuccessful Settlement Negotiations" (with Martin A. Asher and Blakeley B. McShane, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania). The study was featured in the New York Times' Business section on August 8, 2008, and the article was published in Cornell Law School's Journal of Empirical Legal Studies (JELS), a faculty-edited, peer-refereed interdisciplinary journal, in September 2008 (Vol. 5, No. 3, pp. 551-591). The study utilizes DecisionSet®'s extensive databases of settlement negotiations and trial outcomes to identify predictor variables for attorney/litigant decision making errors, integrating the fields of behavioral finance, statistics, and law.

Mr. Kiser's work has been featured in major public newspapers and legal periodicals like The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Dispute Resolution Magazine, Advocate, The Lawyers Weekly and Daily Journal and in interviews with National Public Radio (NPR), the Legal Broadcast Network, Lawyers and Settlements, Lawyers USA, and Radio New Zealand National. International coverage of his research includes print and electronic media in Ireland, Israel, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Chile and England. He presents and moderates programs for professional organizations, businesses and academic institutions such as the American Bar Association, The Mediation Society, Judicial Arbitration and Mediation Services (JAMS), Southern California Mediation Association, Thompson Reuters, Academy of Court-Appointed Masters, the University of Pennsylvania, Cornell University, and Vanderbilt University.

Mr. Kiser received his law degree in 1978 from the University of California, Berkeley (Boalt Hall), and obtained his undergraduate degree in 1975 from the University of California, Davis (Highest Honors). His legal education is complemented by the award in 2002 of a certificate in leadership from the Peter F. Drucker Graduate School of Management, Claremont Graduate University, where his research emphasized cognitive psychology and management decision making. His present research interests center on the application of quantitative methods to enhance legal problem solving, decision making, and forecasting.

Before entering the decision sciences field, Mr. Kiser represented clients in complex commercial litigation disputes for twenty years. He was a partner of a regional law firm for six years and then directed his own multi-attorney firm for eight years, resolving business and real estate cases and representing law firms, partners, fiduciaries, REITs, and corporations, including two of the three largest commercial real estate development companies in Northern California. He has been appointed as a temporary judge, mediator, and arbitrator, and in addition to membership in various bar associations, is a member of the Society for Empirical Legal Studies, the Decision Analysis Society and the American Law and Economics Association.