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Important Clauses in a Contract

By Robert Christopher Leave a comment

In a world of rapid change, running a business is harder than ever before. While the pandemic slowed some activities, many business owners have seen acceleration in business disagreements. Business misunderstandings that grow into disputes and legal conflicts are very real things which can negatively impact your business. Whether it is the high lawyer costs from contract disputes, the loss of time, or the effect on employee relationships, legal disputes wreak havoc. A study released by the U.S. Chamber InstituteRead More

Defusing Disputes with Neutral-Driven Process Keeps You Out of Court

By Robert Christopher Leave a comment

Life moves quickly and businesses need to work hard to keep pace. Along the way, it is not uncommon for stressful legal issues to arise. Whether conflicts come up internally or between businesses partners, clients or vendors, legal action is a far too common scenario. Unfortunately, it has become a trend to simply take any issue directly into the legal system, where time-consuming processes deliver costly, profit-stealing results.  Maybe that makes sense when stakes are high, but most disputes haveRead More

Comparing Cures for Covid Related Lawsuits

By Robert Christopher Comments Off on Comparing Cures for Covid Related Lawsuits

It’s Covid Time.  None of us saw this coming. Vacations, weddings, rent payments, jobs, and so much more, all thrown into chaos, and with that chaos comes uncertainty and disagreements. I’ve made or received a deposit for an event, is a refund owed? What rent is owed when a leased office can’t be used? A project has been delayed or cancelled, who is on the hook? What are the rights of tenants and landlords when payments are missed because ofRead More

Litigation Nightmares

By Robert Christopher Comments Off on Litigation Nightmares

I’ve been working on my upcoming book about our neutral-driven dispute resolution.  It begins with a litigation nightmare from my own law practice about a start-up drug company who disputed a bill from a testing lab after the study results weren’t favorable.  Read the excerpt to see what happened.  The start-up drug company’s CEO was the kind of person who wants everyone to know he’s the smartest person in the room.  To make matters worse, he was also an attorney.  InRead More

Why Litigate: When would you WANT to choose litigation?

By Rob Christopher Leave a comment

Why would you want to litigate? Previously, I wrote an article on reasons why you should avoid litigation. Now, I’ll take a look at the other side of the coin and discuss when litigation might be the more appropriate solution. People and companies end up in litigation for many reasons. Usually, someone – or, more likely, both parties – think they are right or they don’t see any other choice. Although this may be true, it does not offer anyRead More

What Makes a Neutral a “Good” Neutral?

By Rob Christopher Leave a comment

The number one consideration for choosing a dispute resolution service is making sure your neutral is good, whether they are a mediator, arbitrator, or arbiter; but what makes a neutral good? What does “good” really mean in this context? After interviewing business owners in depth to figure out what matters to them the most about the facilitator or decision maker, these five criteria emerged as the most important. Neutral – Disputing parties wanted to make sure that their decision makerRead More

The 5 Must Haves When Choosing a Dispute Resolution Service

By Rob Christopher Leave a comment

After interviewing many business owners to find out what their top considerations are in choosing a dispute resolution service, I’ve compiled a list of the 5 most common considerations from all of the responses. Neutrality Whether you are using an arbitrator, a mediator, an arbiter, or a private judge, make sure the neutral is neutral. I heard this cautionary note time and time again. Make sure if you are going to use the court appointed mediator, that he (or she)Read More

Legal Innovation Trends: Are Law Firms Missing the Boat?

By Rob Christopher Leave a comment

This fourth and final installment in the series of articles on innovation in the legal field covers what innovations are happening. The prior articles focused on why law firms aren’t innovating and what in-house counsel can do to inspire innovation. In reading these other articles, you might walk away with the thought that law firms are missing the “legal innovation” boat. But are they? In looking at what is happening in the legal industry, it seems that law firms areRead More

Guy Kornblum – Insurance Expert

By Rob Christopher Leave a comment

By Guy Kornblum I have a passion for dispute resolution.  It comes from my heritage – a dad who was a lawyer in the Midwest in the 50’s, 60’s and until he retired at 85 years old in the 1990’s.  He was a master negotiator, but at the same time a supreme diplomat.  His best friend – my Godfather – told me that Dad could tell someone to “go to hell” and they would walk away thinking they had justRead More

Just What is NDR?

By Robert Christopher Leave a comment

As you know, what we do at Just Resolve is promote and facilitate neutral-driven, non-adversarial ADR (“Alternative Dispute Resolution”) in legal disputes where legal and other related costs of litigation (and its popular alternatives) would otherwise consume the financial stakes over which the parties are fighting. Neutral-driven ADR is exactly what its name implies, and could also be described just as accurately as Non-adversarial ADR. Either characterization is a mouthful, however, that doesn’t trickle off the tongue, might be confused withRead More