Victoria Pynchon

Victoria "Vickie" Pynchon is an American lawyer, attorney mediator, speaker, author and writer based in Los Angeles.

Education
Pynchon grew up in La Mesa in San Diego County, graduating from La Mesa Junior High School, where she was valedictorian, then graduating in 1970 from Helix High School.

In 1975, she graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor of arts degree in literature from the University of California, San Diego. In 1980, she received her Jurist Doctor from UC Davis School of Law (King Hall), where she graduated with Order of the Coif honors. In 2006, she received her Master of Laws degree from Pepperdine University School of Law.

Career
She was admitted in 1980 to the State Bar of California, and, in 1985, to the U.S. District Courts for the Central, Eastern, Northern and Southern Districts of California and to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal. In the mid 1980s, she was a business lawl professor at California State University at Northridge. She practiced law as a commercial litigator for 25 years before starting a mediation practice in 2004.

She has served as a member of the California State Bar's Standing Committee on Alternative Dispute Resolution, as well as on the Attorney Settlement Officer Panel for the United States District Court for the Central District of California. She also served as a member of the board of directors for the Federal Bar Association's Alternative Dispute Resolution Section committee. She has been a coach and trainer since 1995 for the National Institute for Trial Advocacy.

In 2004, she founded Settle It Now Dispute Resolution Services and has a mediation practice with ADR Services, Inc. in Los Angeles. She also is on the faculty of Solo Practice University and has taught at Pepperdine University’s Straus Institute as an adjunct professor.

Pynchon was profiled in a 2009 article in the Los Angeles Daily Journal.

Speaking engagements
In October 2011, Pynchon moderated a panel with feminist leaders Gloria Steinem, Gloria Feldt, Shelby Knox and Jamia Wilson at the South Carolina Women Lawyers Association annual conference

In April 2009, she co-paneled a session about mediation at the annual American Bar Association's spring conference in New York City. And in 2009 and 2010, Pynchon was a keynote speaker at X2 Healthcare Network's Xscape Conference in Las Vegas, NV, In October 2007, she was a speaker at the IP Litigation and Dispute Resolution Conference held in London, England. Also in October 2007, she was a panelist during “Cyberweek,” sponsored by the University of Massachusetts Amherst Technology and Dispute Resolution Center

She appeared in February 2009 on American Public Media’s "Marketplace." She once hosted a weekly New Day Talk Radio program “Negotiating Women” show.

NPR's Jennifer Ludden in February 2011 on "All Things Considered" featured Pynchon's She Negotiates course, which Pynchon co-teaches with life coach Lisa Gates.

Writing
Until 2011, she was editor-in-chief of the online quarterly literary journal, R-KV-R-Y, which was included in Dzanc Books' 2008 Best of the Web anthology series of literature.

In 2010, Pynchon authored a book for the layperson titled The Grownups' ABCs of Conflict Resolution, released by Reason Press. Her second book, Success as a Mediator For Dummies, was released by John Wiley & Sons in April 2012.

Her essays have been referenced in academic journals, including Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal in 2005. and the Journal of Southern New Hampshire University in 2002 when it published an essay about the process of writing. Her Settle It Now negotiation law blog has been featured on Mediate.com.

Pynchon's articles have been published by the Los Angeles Daily Journal, Law Practice Today, and the National Institute for Advanced Conflict Resolution site. She's a former newsletter editor at Southern California Mediation Association and, until mid 2009, she co-wrote a column for The Complete Lawyer. She edited The Resolver newsletter for the Federal Bar Association ADR section. In May 2010, she became a regular contributor on Forbes.com's "On the Docket" blog and, a year later, founder and contributor of ForbesWoman's She Negotiates blog.

In June 2010, Pynchon was ranked No. 47 on the "Top 100 Academic Law Twitter Feeds" list in a RasmussenCollege.com article that described her as "a master of conflict resolution and deposition skills."

Her poetry has appeared in The Ledge Poetry & Fiction Magazine and Kalliope, Penn State University's literary magazine.

Personal
Pynchon is the daughter of the late Donald Pike, a lawyer and a Los Angeles Superior Court commissioner. She lives in Los Angeles with husband Stephen Goldberg, also an attorney.

Forbes: Is Law School Still a Golden Ticket?
On June 19, 2012, Pynchon drew the ire of many law students and attorneys by allowing Jessi Freud, an aspiring law student who will attend the Shepard Broad Law School at Nova Southeastern University in Fall 2012, to publish a guest post on Pynchon's blog at Forbes.com. In her guest post, Freud claimed that she would attend a U.S. News & World Report Tier 4 school in search of her "golden ticket" because "injustice moves [her]" and because of her belief that "if-you-work-hard-good-things-will-happen". Commenters explained to Freud why her career plan was unrealistic and potentially disastrous and criticized Pynchon for posting the piece. In the comments, Pynchon supported Freud's decision to attend the fourth tier law school.

Two days after the guest post was published, Pynchon was criticized on Professor Paul Campos' "Inside the Law School Scam" blog for, among other things, being a "perpetually clueless baby boomer and (unwitting?) law school shill". In the wake of the post, Punchon has also been criticized at several legal forums.