Workshop: Practical Strategies for Legal Writing and Drafting

About the Event

Center for Art Law was proud to host Dean Nicyper, partner at Withersworldwide’s litigation and arbitration team, for a workshop on the practical aspects of legal writing and drafting. Dean, who is one of the most experienced attorneys in the field, shared his tried and tested best practices in drafting and editing compelling legal writings. This session offered an overview of key legal documents and strategies for preparing them effectively. Participants learned how to approach court briefs, affidavits, declarations, and pleadings, as well as tips for handling discovery tools like interrogatories. The workshop also focused on how to tailor your communication and language when drafting for different audiences, whether addressing the court, opposing counsel, or clients.

About the Speaker

Dean Nicyper is a partner at Withersworldwide. He focuses on commercial disputes, contract disputes, art law, intellectual property, fiduciary liability, product liability, private company investor disputes, and securities litigation and investigations. Dean also has litigated matters involving mergers and acquisitions, the First Amendment, media, constitutional law, and environmental contamination. He has handled trials and cases in federal and state courts around the United States. In addition, Dean has negotiated and drafted many agreements in art and intellectual property transactions.

Among his various clients, Dean has successfully represented one of the two largest art auction houses in dozens of lawsuits covering a broad range of art law-related issues, such as the authenticity of works of art, art fraud, auction law, consignment obligations as well as rights and obligations of parties in loan transactions where works of art have been pledged as collateral. His experience also has expanded to include blockchain and technology based art authentication as well as artificial intelligence art generation issues. Dean has represented artists and their families and foundations, art dealers and agents, art collectors, and art appraisers in many art-related disputes. He was lead counsel in the initial cases uncovering the two of the largest art fraud scandals in the past 20 years, and counsel for victims of two of the other largest art fraud scandals. Dean was head of Withers US Dispute Resolution Division for eight years and previously was Chair of the Art Law Committee of the New York City Bar Association.