Background and Experience

Ruben E. Acosta, Owner and Sole LLC Member, graduated from the University of Connecticut School of Law in 1983 and was licensed to practice law in the state and federal courts in 1984. He has received forty (40) hours of formal mediation classroom training from the University of Connecticut.

Attorney Acosta has extensive training as an arbitrator, mediator and administrative hearing officer through the Connecticut Bar Association ("CBA"), the American Arbitration Association ("AAA") and the State of Connecticut. He has also completed many continuing legal education units and seminars in the substantive areas related to his practice.

He served for many years in the CT Bar Association [Executive Committee- Labor and Employment and Alternative Dispute Resolution Sections]. Attorney Acosta was an Associate Topic Editor for the "CBA" Journal and a Member of the CBA's Committee To Attract Minority Participation in the Association.

Attorney Acosta is a Past President and Executive Board member for the Connecticut Hispanic Bar Association.
 

For twenty years Attorney Acosta worked in the public and private sectors in human resource and labor relations administrative and legal positions. During that time he worked with union and non-union employers in the  education, municipal, insurance and manufacturing sectors. The last fifteen years Attorney Acosta has been self employed working in the areas of arbitration, mediation, fact finding,case evaluation, training and consulting .

Attorney Acosta has conducted grievance arbitrations hearings for the AAA, Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service ("FMCS") and the American Dispute Resolution Center ("ADRC"). For the last year and a half he has been a member of a closed Pre-Arbitration Review Panel for the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Association of Traffic Controllers.
 
Attorney Acosta is also a rostered commercial arbitrator with the ADRC and has heard or conciliated a substantial number of franchise termination disputes with SUBWAY and its franchisees.

From 1999 to 2007 Attorney Acosta was in the expedited arbitration roster for the Postal Service and the US Postal Workers' Union (New England Region)( Connecticut). From 2002 to 2007 he was in a closed labor arbitration panel with American Medical Response.

Attorney Acosta has also been listed under the Municipal Employees Relations Act (10 years) and the Teacher-Board Negotiation Act (13 years) interest arbitration rosters. Likewise he has been listed as a mediator under the Teacher-Board Negotiations Act. 

A substantial portion of Attorney Acosta's work in the last fourteen years has also involved administrative hearing work, under contract, in discrimination (CHRO) (8 years), expulsion, residency and certificate revocation (Deparment of Education)(13 years) and disability matters (Department of Social Services-Bureau of Rehabilitation Services))(11 years) and the special education due process.

Attorney Acosta is an approved provider of sexual harassment training under the Commission of Human Rights and Opportunities statutory program. He provides training to employers and labor unions in a wide variety of personnel and administration topics such as grievance handling, sexual harassment, handling discrimination charges, conflict management and collaboration, misconduct investigations, delegation and supervision, discipline, etc. All the latter are taught from a holistic, interest based, perspective for the purpose of fostering labor-management cooperation. The training draws on his experience with School Based and Site Based Management, Transformative Mediation Model and Collaborative Bargaining.