Dov Seidman

Dov Seidman (born May 13, 1964) is an American author, attorney, columnist and businessman.^[1] He is the founder, chairman and CEO of LRN,^[2] an ethics and compliance management firm.^[3][4]

Early life

Seidman was born in San Francisco, California. His father, Alex, was a Polish-born physician who died in 1992.^[2] While on a trip with his mother, Sydelle, and his two siblings, Ari and Goldee, to Israel, his mother decided that they would remain there; at the time, Seidman was 3 years old.^[5] He returned to the United States in 1977, when he was 13. Seidman is dyslexic.^[6] Seidman’s dyslexia is the subject of a case study in the book The Dyslexic Advantage.^[7]

Education

In Israel, Seidman did not excel in his studies. He had difficulty with the Hebrew language and because his mother shifted between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, he had been enrolled at four different schools. When his mother brought him back to the United States, he found success in sports but still suffered in school. Because his family had moved a lot during his childhood, the first time he was in the same school for two consecutive years was when he started the 11th grade in Beverly Hills High School.^[2] He scored a mere 970 on the SAT exam (at the time scored out of 1600). He was accepted to the University of California, Santa Barbara while his best friend had been invited to attend UCLA. Determined to attend what he considered a first rate school, Seidman wrote a letter to UCLA pleading with them to be accepted, and they agreed, on condition that he take an English language course.^[5]

Seidman attended UCLA simultaneously for both bachelor's and master's degrees in philosophy, graduating summa cum laude in 1987.^[8] He then received another bachelor's degree with honors from Oxford University in philosophy, politics and economics, where he was a Newton-Tatum scholar and served as captain of the Balliol College crew team.^[8] Following Oxford, he attended Harvard Law School, where he served as teaching fellow for professors Alan Dershowitz and Morton Horwitz^[8] and Michael Sandel, graduating in 1992.^[9]

Career

Upon graduating law school in 1992, Seidman first went to work at the Washington, D.C office of O'Melveny & Myers. He then spent time at different firms, including Arnold & Porter and Steptoe & Johnson. He also served in the Office of the Legal Adviser at the U.S. State Department and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.^[8]

Seidman was a member of the RAND Institute for Civil Justice Board of Overseers.^[8]

LRN

Seidman launches LRN in 1994 with the intent of creating a professional legal research firm for corporations, instead of them hiring inexperienced lawyers to advance through time consuming and laborious research.^[2]

Only few weeks after the launch of LRN (previously referred to as Legal Research Network, and sometimes also referred to as the Legal Knowledge Company), the company found mention on the front page of The Wall Street Journal. Soon afterwards, large corporations such as Motorola, Johnson & Johnson, DuPont and Chevron were signing on for LRN's services.^[2]

Seidman testified before the U.S. Sentencing Commission about the need for companies to develop ethical cultures instead of ‘check-the-box’, compliance-only approaches, and his testimony helped shaped the amendments to the Federal Sentencing Guidelines^[10]

LRN has a flat reporting structure which emphasizes "collaborative management." A New York Times column described the company as moving toward self-governance with staff reporting to the company mission instead of having formal titles.^[11]

Best-selling author

US Book Cover

Seidman wrote a book entitled: How: Why HOW We Do Anything Means Everything... in Business (and in Life), published in September 2007. In 2011, How: Why HOW We Do Anything Means Everything, an expanded edition, was published. The expanded edition contains a foreword written by former United States President Bill Clinton. Divided into four parts, it covers the topics such as how trust and reputation are critical to prospering in business and how modifying ones actions and decisions can make the road to success easier to navigate. The second edition of his book became a New York Times Best Seller.^[12]

Columnist

Seidman is a columnist for DealBook in the New York Times; the digital Wall Street Journal,^[13] Forbes,^[14] and The Huffington Post.^[15]

Legal battle

Through writing his book and developing talking points for his lectures, Seidman has distilled his perspective with a catchy phrase. The first sentence of his book is: “this is a HOW book, not a how-to book,” and Seidman uses the tag line “how matters” when providing his insight into success in business^[16]

Chobani, the yogurt company founded in 2005 by a Turkish immigrant began an ad campaign in 2014 centered on the phrase "how matters," emphasizing that there are many types and brands of yogurt but that how it is made makes all the difference in the world.

In 2014, Seidman sued yogurt maker Chobani and its advertising agency, New York City based Droga5, for allegedly violating his trademarks of the word "how" in relation to values and behavior in the corporate sphere.^[17] Both Chobani and Drago5 rebuffed the suit by claiming they had never even heard of Seidman and that the terms in question are too broad to reasonably consider as trademarked.^[1]

As of April 2015, Chobani has dropped their contentious ad campaign, instead partnering with Opperman Weiss to take their brand in a different direction. Chobani spokesman Peter McGuinness claimed the decision to introduce a new campaign had "nothing to do with the pending litigation," adding that the company was no longer working with Droga5.^[18]

Awards and honors

Seidman gave the commencement address at UCLA College of Letters and Science in 2002.^[19] He was given the Jurisprudence Award by the Anti-Defamation League in 2003.^[20] In 2008, the Economic Times named Seidman one of the Top 60 Global Thinkers of the Last Decade.^[21] Since 2008, Seidman and LRN have been the corporate partner of The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity’s Prize in Ethics Essay Contest, an annual competition for students to analyze ethical issues.^[10] In 2009, Seidman was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Human Letters by the Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion^[22] Seidman was a keynote address speaker at the United Nations Global Compact in 2015.^[23]

Personal life

Seidman resides in New York City, New York with his wife and two children.

External links

• LRN^[24]
• HOW is the Answer^[25]
• The HOW Column - Forbes^[26]

References