Jeremy Baker has successfully mediated complex, high-stakes construction and design disputes nationwide. His experience spans a wide range of project types and legal issues, from multi-party disputes over skyscrapers and nuclear reactors to complex insurance matters and disputes involving hospitals and universities. He has honed his skills in diverse settings, including federal court lawsuits and high-profile mediations facilitated by nationally recognized neutrals.
Beyond his mediation advocacy work, Jeremy contributes to thought leadership in the field, advocating for early dispute resolution and innovative techniques like Guided Choice. He has also written and lectured extensively on mediation, sharing his perspective with practitioners and scholars. This combined approach – practical experience, theoretical contributions, and scholarly engagement – makes Jeremy a uniquely effective advocate for clients seeking efficient and cost-effective resolutions to their most challenging construction and design disputes.
Since 2002, Jeremy has used mediation to resolve high-stakes construction and design disputes. He has participated in mediations continuously, handling seven- and eight-figure claims across the country, often involving federal court lawsuits, involving multiple parties, highly technical matters, and complex insurance coverage issues. His experience includes:
These matters have arisen on projects such as skyscrapers, nuclear reactors, public utilities, hospitals, universities, resort hotels, and manufacturing plants.
As part of the litigation teams at Schiff Hardin LLP, Jeremy took part in:
These matters spanned from New York to California, and each was facilitated by mediators who also handled some of the nation’s most consequential antitrust, opioid, and mass tort disputes, and NFL/MLB stadium matters – the highest echelon of mediation practice, open only to the most significant cases and counsel.
Jeremy used negotiation and neutral assistance to resolve a $20 million Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) claim against a global architecture firm involving a landmark luxury hotel, containing catastrophic exposure beyond its $5 million policy limits, and saving the client by achieving a settlement within insurance coverage. He led a
Using a federal judge mediator, Jeremy resolved Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Fair Housing Act (FHA) claims against his architect client, which along with the contractor and developer of a mixed-use, multi-family project, were sued for nearly $3 million, plus attorneys’ fees and punitive damages, ending litigation through a multi-party settlement embodied in a consent decree supervised by a federal judge over several years.
Jeremy used mediation to favorably resolve a $2.5 million acoustical design dispute over a motion picture post-production facility, a four-party case with ten expert witnesses. The settlement was reached after multiple sessions, just before a scheduled arbitration, protecting his architect client with a mediated settlement funded largely by others. After suing to foreclose a $1.8 million mechanics lien on an upscale resort hotel project – in a mountain west ski town, opposed by well-funded investors with national counsel – Jeremy used mediation to settle and get his architect client paid.
He mediated a seven-figure insurance coverage dispute, arising from a personal injury claim tied to a high school construction project, helping to resolve the claim short of a federal court trial, protecting his architect client. Jeremy used mediation to resolve a $1 million mechanics lien foreclosure on a major residential development, securing payment for a specialty materials fabricator by exploiting contract chain gaps and survey defects that pressured the real estate developer to settle – or have its plat of survey and pre-sale of dozens of lots thrown out.
When $1.4 million in design and construction defects caused a 96-day delay in converting retail space to loft offices, threatening a tenant’s lease deadline, Jeremy first settled with contractors to clear title, release liens, and secure occupancy, and then forced a resistant design team and its insurer into settlement through multiple mediation sessions over two years – achieving his client’s goals far more cost-effectively than litigation.
Jeremy has also mediated dozens of smaller design and construction disputes, subrogation claims, products liability actions, and commercial mediations in the six-figure range since 2002, among them:
He has also mediated a wide range of other matters, including a Wisconsin federal court subrogation lawsuit following a manufacturing facility fire, the wrongful termination of his design builder project, and other disputes pending in state and federal court, more than he can recollect – consistently bringing complex, multi-party disputes into favorable mediated settlements.
Jeremy’s work extends beyond practice into the theory and scholarship of mediation, where he has tried to move the field toward wider acceptance and earlier use.
As early as 2010, he co-authored “Ethics and Mediation: Managing Conflicts of Interest“ in the American Arbitration Association Handbook on Mediation, Second Edition, with Paul M. Lurie. Most recently, in September 2025, he spoke at the American Bar Association’s (ABA) Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) Summit, a day-long event at DePaul University College of Law co-sponsored by the ABA’s Dispute Resolution Section and Tort Trial and Insurance Practice Section, featuring more than a dozen panels and thirty panelists. Jeremy joined a panel moderated by Clifford Shapiro on early dispute resolution, where he contributed the advocate’s perspective to a program otherwise dominated by mediators, and authored the written materials distributed to attendees. You can download those materials here.
For years, Jeremy has written extensively on mediation for the Illinois Institute for Continuing Legal Education (IICLE). He first co-authored Chapter 19, “Nonbinding Alternatives to Court Litigation for Resolving Construction Disputes“ with Paul M. Lurie in 2018. He then updated the chapter himself in 2022 and again in 2025, this time with his associate, Jonathan Berjikian, as co-author. He also co-authored Chapter 13, Alternative Dispute Resolution Terms in Construction Contracts, with Stanley P. Sklar and Paul M. Lurie in 2018, and subsequently updated it under his own name in 2022 and again in 2025, this time with Jonathan Berjikian. Jeremy also co-authored How Guided Choice Mediation Achieves Earlier Construction Settlements in the Construction Law Letter (2018), advancing mediation strategies to achieve faster, more cost-efficient resolutions in complex construction disputes.
Jeremy is a strong proponent of Guided Choice Dispute Resolution, a process pioneered and championed by his mentor and former law partner Paul M. Lurie of Schiff Hardin LLP. Guided Choice is not a new invention but a framework that collects the best techniques thoughtful mediators have used for decades. Its emphasis is on process over event: instead of treating mediation as a single day of shuttle diplomacy, Guided Choice engages the neutral early, diagnoses the real obstacles to settlement, and designs a multi-phase path to remove those barriers before premature bargaining begins.
This means that Guided Choice mediation promotes earlier, cost-efficient resolution of design and construction disputes—cases that almost always settle, but too often settle years late and only after unnecessary expense. By focusing on interests, information gaps, and psychological or organizational impediments rather than only the legal merits, Guided Choice provides parties a framework for resolving disputes at the right time and on the right terms. Jeremy has recorded a series of videos on this site explaining how he applies Guided Choice in his practice and why he believes it is the most effective way to resolve high-stakes construction disputes.
The steps of Guided Choice typically include:
This layered approach allows the mediator to identify why the parties cannot settle at present and to remove those barriers. This ensures that when negotiations commence, they have a much higher chance of success.
For more on Guided Choice, see our Guided Choice Dispute Resolution videos and our dedicated Guided Choice Dispute Resolution page.
Mediation is an effective way to resolve design and construction disputes. It allows parties to establish a formal process to explore the possibility of settling their dispute, helped by a neutral third party, when informal negotiations have failed. A neutral facilitator, often a retired judge or highly experienced construction mediation lawyer, helps the disputing parties determine if an early settlement of the construction dispute is in their best interests.
Mediation is ‘non-binding’ and ‘voluntary.’ Mediators lack the power to pick a winner or loser, or to force parties to settle. Any party can abandon the process at any time they deem strategic. Participating in non-binding mediation does not prevent the parties who choose not to settle from going ahead with ‘binding’ dispute resolution processes – like arbitration and litigation – where arbitrators or judges will indeed determine who wins and loses.
Information exchange is the key to resolving disputes. Often, when someone says they are not ready to settle a dispute, they really mean that they lack enough information to assess whether a settlement is in their best interests. Mediation allows parties to exchange information quickly and inexpensively. Arbitration and litigation are more formal processes, and less efficient means of information exchange. It can take months or years to learn through these ‘binding’ processes what you can learn in a single day of ‘non-binding’ mediation.
Mediation is misunderstood. Many lawyers think they understand it but offer misguided reasons not to mediate: “suggesting mediation is a sign of weakness” or “the other side is unreasonable, so it is a waste of time” or “we must leave no stone unturned in discovery before mediation.” We disagree. A good mediation – where the parties work together in an earnest and good faith effort to overcome impasse, guided by a mediator who understands the human psychology of disputes and why people adopt positions and resist change – can spare the parties years of expense and inconvenience in court or arbitration.
Through speaking and writing, Jeremy has tried to dispel some of these design and construction mediation myths:
Mediation is a ‘non-binding’ and ‘voluntary’ form of dispute resolution for design and construction claims. In mediation, the mediator – a neutral facilitator, who is often a retired judge or highly experienced construction attorney – helps the disputing parties, perhaps a property owner and contractor, determine if an early settlement of the dispute is in their best interests.
Mediators lack the power to pick a winner or loser, or to force parties to settle. Any party can abandon the process at any time they deem strategic. Participating in non-binding mediation does not prevent the parties who choose not to settle from going ahead with ‘binding’ dispute resolution processes – like arbitration and litigation – where arbitrators or judges will determine who wins and loses.
A good mediation – where the parties work together in an earnest and good faith effort to overcome impasse, guided by a mediator who understands the human psychology of disputes and why people adopt positions and resist change – can spare the parties years of expense and inconvenience in court or arbitration.
The biggest advantage of mediation is that all sides to the dispute can agree on a resolution that judges or arbitrators are not empowered to order. You can settle your dispute on your own terms, with a neutral third party helping you see all sides of the situation and the pros and cons of each possible outcome.
Other advantages include:
Under the Uniform Mediation Act, the mediator controls the process, but they do not have the authority to issue and enforce a binding agreement. The parties are the ones who control the outcome. You are under no obligation to agree to a settlement and can end the process at any time.
Yes. Mediation can be started at any time, even after a claim has been filed and a court date set. The parties and their attorneys can advise the judge that they want to try resolving the dispute through mediation instead. In most instances, the court will grant the request if it’s clear that all sides are entering the process voluntarily. If mediation is unsuccessful, and no agreement is reached, the parties are free to take the case to arbitration or trial.
Jeremy is a big proponent of well-designed dispute resolution procedures. He understands that court mediation services are inherently flexible and customizable.
Thanks to great mentors, Jeremy knows the importance of hiring world-class mediators early in the dispute – before his clients suffer business disruption, the loss of hard-earned relationships, and the high cost of litigation or arbitration. He knows how to select mediators who can gain the parties’ trust, investigate why disputes have not been settled, encourage collaborative and reasonable information exchange, anticipate impasse, and design a process to overcome the obstacles to settlement.
For more information on how to use mediation to resolve your design and construction disputes quickly and cost-effectively, contact a construction mediation lawyer at our firm.
A good mediation – where the parties work together in an earnest and good faith effort to overcome impasse, guided by a mediator who understands the human psychology of disputes and why people adopt positions and resist change – can spare the parties years of expense and inconvenience in court or arbitration.
Contact Jeremy S. Baker, a Chicago-based design and construction attorney who served at “big law” firms for nearly 18 years before launching Baker Law.
Baker Law, Design & Construction Counsel
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Cook County Office 33 N. Dearborn, Lake County Office 790 Estate Drive, 
