When, in September, families of the victims of a tragic shooting at an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater became frustrated with how a compensation fund was being handled, there was perhaps only one man to call—Kenneth Feinberg. The lawyer and high-profile mediator has long been known for helping victims and victim funds move forward toward some form of resolution.

Now, not even a month later, Feinberg has again worked his magic. He announced Monday that he was able to reach a payment protocol to disperse $5 million left in the Aurora Victim Relief Fund, according to the Denver Post. The agreement mostly compensates the families of those who died or sustained lasting injuries. The remainder will help those with extended hospital stays.

While the quick resolution is a victory for families who felt the fund was misused and that payment wasn’t forthcoming when needed, it was—as usual—a small victory.

“I don't hear a lot of criticism—for one, there's resignation,” Feinberg told the Post. “People generally feel, ‘Well, he's getting the money out the door.’ Is it perfect? Absolutely not. There's not enough money. It's a horrible situation.”

As the level-headed engineer of settlements ranging from 9/11 to the Virginia Tech shootings to the BP oil spill, Feinberg is no stranger to far from perfect. Still, he’s managed to create quite a niche for himself as a special master for compensation cases. With a career spanning from a 1984 Agent Orange settlement to the upcoming case of the Penn State University victims, Feinberg remains unassuming about the skill it takes to try to bring closure for those affected by tremendous losses.

“I think I'm doing what millions of Americans would do if asked,” Feinberg told the Associated Press when he agreed to take on the Aurora case—like many of his cases—pro bono. “I've had experience doing this, so I get the call. This is not rocket science. This is trying to take a limited pot of money, distribute it as soon as you can, as quickly as you can to eligible people in sore need of this money.”

Others are not so understated about Feinberg’s skills, which often result in a high percentage of participants agreeing the settlement terms.

“Ken knows how to look at a complex problem and design a system that tends to the needs of all stakeholders, is efficient and is sensitive also to what the public might think,” Feinberg colleague Robert Bordone, the director of Harvard Law School’s negotiation and mediation clinical program, told the ABA Journal. “He’s a brilliant system designer of the next-level cutting edge for alternative dispute resolution.”

However, Feinberg isn’t everyone's golden child when it comes to mediating disputes. He’s had to slowly find his groove, making some noticeable mistakes along the way—including taking some criticism for harsh treatment of 9/11 victim’s families. And at least one person has wondered if Feinberg himself might be getting too big to fail.

“It seems we’ve moved into a new universe of problematic dispute resolution where people really are unrepresented,” Linda Mullenix, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law who knows and admires Feinberg, posited to the ABA Journal after the BP spill. “All they have is Ken Feinberg saying, ‘This is good for you; come on in and it’s in your best interest.’ As you move from each model to the next, there’s less oversight. Who’s guarding the guardian?”

Regardless of those concerns, it’s in cases like the Aurora shootings that Feinberg really shines—and the key isn’t his legal acumen or even his negotiating skills. According to him, it’s his ability to let people voice their angst and know they were heard.

“When you set up these programs, if you can do it, give every claimant the right to be heard,” he recently told NPR’s Talk of the Nation host Neal Conan. “Let the claimant vent, vent about, ‘Why me, why the loss of my brother, why the loss of my wife or my husband? That opportunity—to express, to disclaim—very, very important to the success of voluntarily signing up for the programs.”