Kahlil Amyn Day

Kahlil Amyn Day, now a distinguished retired American lawyer, is a consultant educated in law, negotiation, entrepreneurship, and risk management, and presently resides in the National Capital Region.  He successfully argued and briefed several thousand cases in state and federal courts, including the United States Supreme Court, and mediated more than 12,500 disputes following his first successful trial in federal court more than 40 years ago.

Mr. Day completed 30 years of service with The State of Florida on May 31, 2023 and 38 years of service as a member of the Florida Bar on February 1, 2024. Further, prior to retiring, he served on law and mediator boards and committees, joined in mediator ethics advisory opinions, contributed to legal, mediation, and risk management publications, and provided pro bono services for many years.

Mr. Day joined the field of dispute resolution upon observing the psychological trauma and the financial burden that individuals, businesses, and governments sustain during protracted litigation. He has worked with decision makers as a third-party intermediary to resolve disputes in a forward-looking manner, and to develop adaptive practices to mitigate and manage immediate, mid-range, and transferred risks. And he worked with parties to build unities of interest and effort, resiliency, and value-added outcomes. Additionally, he worked to preserve relationships when mutually beneficial.

Mr. Day completed his legal studies at the University of Oregon, where he attained his Juris Doctorate, gained the Outstanding Advocate (Mock Trial) Award, was certificated in environmental and ocean and coastal law, and was admitted to the Chase Inn of Phi Delta Phi legal honor society. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University, where he learned from distinguished scholars in the fields of literature, anthropology, and education. Over the course of his career, he was certificated in negotiation through the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, entrepreneurship through the London School of Economics, environmental law through the Vermont Law School, climate emergency through the Saïd and Smith Colleges at Oxford University, leadership coaching through HEC Paris, and crisis management through the Yale School of Management. Further, Mr. Day was honored with the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award.

Mr. Day is a life fellow of the American Bar Foundation, a life fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts, a life member of Phi Delta Phi, and an alumni of the American Inns of Court and Delta Kappa Epsilon.

However, Mr. Day, unbound, strived to facilitate effective, lawful, ethical processes, and to listen, reflect, and ask difficult questions, as well as to encourage critical thinking to manage conflict. Away from the conference room, he has been happy to recollect over freshly brewed coffee; fishing for grayling on the Alaska tundra, wild trout in the fast running waters flowing off Mount Kilimanjaro, and tarpon in the Boca Grande Pass; as well as whale watching in the Azores; backpacking across Europe; ballooning over Masai Mara; white water rafting in the Himalayas; diving with reef sharks in Moorea; skydiving over Seneca Lake; crossing the Drake in an expedition ship; and other resiliency building activities.

Mr. Day may be reached at kad67@cornell.edu