The best way to deter threats of litigation and minimize the costs, duration, and distractions of resolving any dispute is to put a dispute resolution clause specifying NDR — Neutral-Driven Resolution — in all your contracts BEFORE there is a problem. That means that if a dispute should arise between a business and a contractor, supplier, or customer, NDR will be the already-agreed method of resolving it. It can be done simply and at the beginning of a relationship –Read More

Many people are surprised by how effective NDR can be.   Since publishing my book and speaking at events about NDR (Neutral-Driven Resolution), I’ve often been asked a simple question: Does it work? And if it really does lower the costs and the time it takes to settle common disputes, why doesn’t everybody know about it? Why isn´t it like Starbucks — everywhere?   The second part of the question is complicated, as I point out in Chapter Nine ofRead More

New Alternative Dispute Resolution Book Describes Innovative Method to Lower Costs, Aggravation of Business and Legal Disputes  A Neutral-Driven Resolution Process Saves Substantial Time, Money, Stress SAN JOSE, Calif., March 24, 2022 — Legal disputes and conflicts cost businesses billions of dollars a year in lawyers’ fees, lost productivity, time, and aggravation. A new book proposes an innovative, faster, and simpler way to settle common business and legal disputes without absurdly high costs and headaches of lengthy litigation or traditionalRead More

It sounds crazy, but it’s all too true: a limited-stakes dispute over $47,000 costing more than one-and-a-half times that in legal fees in a failed attempt to recover it. That might sound impossible, or worse, outright fraud. But it happens far too often. It happened to me in a case I handled for a small family-owned animal testing lab. The lab was owed $47,000 from a pharmaceutical company that was refusing to pay. It was a case that was ripeRead More