Business Disputes

While alternative dispute resolution in business matters is a well-established practice, collaborative law can add a further dimension of control and balance to the process of resolving business disputes.

Business litigation is often given a second priority by the court system, which finds it more expedient to allow the parties to resolve their own issues through a lengthy and expensive discovery process, before a trial date is set. A business lawsuit, whether resulting from a contract dispute, a partnership disagreement, small, or closely-held business issues of business succession, or a workplace controversy, can often be handled more efficiently with several economically sensitive, focused collaborative meetings, in which extensively trained, experienced business dispute lawyers, as well as financial neutrals and business coaches strive to define and narrow issues to resolve disputes efficiently by using well established methods of problem-solving, rather than name-calling.

Collaborative business dispute resolution goes hand-in-hand with business mediation, in which a single neutral attempts to work out an agreement between the parties; however, sometimes the clients are already so entrenched, or there exists a power imbalance between them (as in a minority, versus a majority shareholder), that the circumstances call for advocates for both clients, to “level the playing field.” Those collaborative practitioners discuss issues, rather than personalities, and support their clients’ interests respectfully, rather than provoking further animosity, and create an atmosphere in which civil disputes may be aired and reconciled with a minimum of wasteful stress and emotional distraction.

Collaborative Practice uniquely uses an interdisciplinary team approach and offers the addition of neutrals to help facilitate the process. The collaborative facilitator guides the process and helps manage successful communication style. He keeps the attorneys and other team members on track in achieving the client goals. The neutral enhances the ability of others to focus on the underlying aspects of the law while meeting as many of the clients’ needs as possible.

We had heard horror stories about companies that almost went bankrupt on lawyers’ fees while restructuring a business partnership. We wanted to prevent that from happening to us. We decided to give Collaborative Law a shot, although it sounded too good to be true.