Paul A. Finn

Paul Finn joins Signature Resolution’s new panel of Boston neutrals as one of the most experienced and sought-after mediators in the country. The founder and chief executive of Massachusetts-based ADR firm, Commonwealth Mediation and Conciliation, Inc. (CMCI), Paul has mediated and arbitrated over 10,000 claims spanning the full range of civil litigation, with a particular national reputation in mass claims matters involving institutional liability, catastrophic injury, and complex multi-party construction disputes. He is defined by a credibility built on honesty and preparation, not performance, and an ability to move things forward with pragmatic problem-solving.

Over more than 30 years of handling complex and mass claims across the country, Paul has developed commanding fluency in the legal and practical frameworks, from First Amendment considerations and causal connection to proportional liability standards and statute of limitations across all 50 states. He does not manage parties with false optimism, but grounds his approach in clear-eyed realism backed by a depth of substantive knowledge that attorneys on both sides find difficult to challenge. When parties come prepared and in good faith, Paul is focused and unrelenting in his pursuit of a path forward. Resolution, in his view, is a business decision, and he helps parties make it with clarity.

Paul’s national reputation in mass claims was built through mediation work on some of the most high-profile and sensitive institutional liability proceedings in the country, including diocesan sexual abuse cases beginning in 1992, major construction disaster claims, and bankruptcy-administered proceedings involving thousands of claimants. He has worked with major insurance carriers and navigated the full complexity of multi-party disputes where liability, coverage, and claimant management must be resolved in concert. His command of the legal, insurance, and jurisdictional complexities unique to large-scale institutional claims has made him one of a small number of mediators in the country trusted to handle cases of this scope and sensitivity.

Before founding CMCI in 1992, Paul co-founded Berks & Finn in Brockton, Massachusetts, where he built a broad litigation practice across criminal, civil, family, and Social Security matters. That foundation, combined with his Master of Liberal Arts in Government from Harvard University, completed while running CMCI full-time, informs an approach grounded equally in legal rigor and practical judgment. He also prevailed in a landmark Massachusetts Appeals Court case establishing that a mediator cannot be compelled to testify about the content of a mediation, a precedent that reflects the seriousness with which he holds the obligations of the neutral’s role.

Today, Paul brings to Signature Resolution a practical, unsentimental commitment to help parties reach decisions they can stand behind, informed by a practice built on the kind of experience that cannot be replicated: decades of work on the most complex and consequential claims in the country, and a hard-earned fluency in the legal frameworks that govern case resolution. For attorneys navigating matters where the stakes are high, the claimant pool is large, and the path to resolution demands a mediator who has been in that room before, Paul Finn has been there more than almost anyone.