John Rabiej

John K. Rabiej is the founder of the nonprofit Rabiej Litigation Law Center. He partnered with the George Washington Complex Litigation Center for two years.  Mr. Rabiej joined Duke Law in early 2011 after serving one year as the Executive Director/Director of Judicial Outreach for The Sedona Conference. He served as the Deputy Director of the Bolch Judicial Institute for one year and the Director of the Duke Law Center for Judicial Studies for seven years.  As the Director of the Judicial Studies Center, Mr. Rabiej oversaw the running of the master’s LLM program for judges, held annual bench-bar conferences, formed lawyer teams that drafted best practices addressing class actions, discovery, and mass-tort MDLs, acquired, managed, and published Judicature for five years, and acquired and managed EDRM for three years.   

Previously, Mr. Rabiej was the Chief of the Rules Committee Support Office for 20 years, establishing and heading the office that staffed the six rules committees of the United States Judicial Conference.  He has written extensively on ediscovery, including chapter 37A of Moore’s Federal Practice, chapters in Weinstein’s Federal Evidence Manual, co-authored with Judge Lee Rosenthal and Professor David Levi the Federal Civil Procedure Manual, Juris Publisher (2014), and co-authored with former Judge Alex Kozinski the Federal Appellate Procedure Manual, Juris Publisher (2014). Mr. Rabiej was the principal editor of the Guidelines and Best Practices Implementing the 2015 Discovery Amendments Concerning Proportionality (Bolch Judicial Institute, Duke) and Technology Assisted Review (TAR) Guidelines (Bolch Judicial Institute, Duke). He has written the “Director” columns in eight issues of Judicature (2015-2017) and more than 20 articles on ediscovery, which were published in the LexisNexis Emerging Issues series of expert commentaries (2008-2014).  He has also written many articles on rules-related issues, including the meaning and purposes of rule amendments and served as principal editor on class action, ediscovery, diversity, securities class actions, and mass-tort MDL best practices at Duke and George Washington Law Schools. 

Mr. Rabiej was elected to the American Law Institute in 2005. He received the inaugural “Champion of Class Action Justice” award from the Berkeley Research Group in 2021.  He serves on the North Carolina Chief Justice’s Rules Advisory Commission.