Resolution of Disputes
Contentious disputes in litigation can be resolved via different approaches. Most larger law firms treat litigation as an hourly billing event – charge as much time as you want and the client will pay for it. We believe there are alternative approaches that are much more client friendly from an expense point of view.
Design to Cost
This is a fairly old concept for pursuing litigation that everyone seems to have forgotten about. You simply decide how much you are going to spend on a piece of litigation – then whatever that amount is, your lawyers back up and design that litigation to the costs that are available to expend. It’s really nothing more than a detailed budget that forces ingenuity.
Most lawyers don’t like this because they feel it abridges their creativity and limits what they can do. What they’re forgetting is that litigation is just another business tool. No business can be pursued without a fairly strict budget – litigation included. The difficulty is having the discipline to keep to the budget, and the creativity to achieve results within the budget.
The Rifle Shot
This is a bit more complicated in terms of approach. Instead of analyzing the cost and working to a budget, you look at all the potential issues in the case and decide that there are only one or two that are worth pursuing for precedential or economic reasons.
You pick out those one or two issues and you focus the entire litigation on them only, then decide on a budget.
The Short-Circuit
This is the most complicated and the most controversial. What you’re doing is looking for ways to short-circuit a portion of a person’s business – or make them think that will occur – so that they will resolve their particular dispute.
This is not uncommon – you can see it happening with HR disputes, product liability, etc., but it has much broader application. Social media may be an integrated tool to accomplishing this.
Collection Work
And it should be remembered that virtually all litigation is just collection work of some sort. Somebody hasn’t paid what the other person thinks is owed. The parties engage in litigation to force this to happen. Lawyers don’t like this term because of the notion that it relegates them to a lower level in the legal profession. We are comfortable describing our role in the business community for what it is.
Some collection matters are large, and involve an individual, stand-alone situation. Others are repetitive problems a business faces. We do both kinds of work and have a detailed brochure explaining our approach. We have thought this through and organized it in a way that is low cost and gets this headache for smaller matters off the company’s plate.
Do Not Put the Problem Off — It Will Likely Only Get Worse
We will analyze a situation, identify the crucial issues, and conduct an initial consultation at no cost before accepting a retainer or beginning a case. Then we work with you to provide practical litigation solutions.