Here is how to resolve a legal dispute. Approach it the way you make your medical decisions. Start with consulting your “primary care lawyer”, just as you would first see your primary care physician.
Your primary care lawyer will give you good advice about what options you have for resolving your dispute. Your primary care lawyer is probably not a litigator, just as most of us don’t have surgeons for our primary care physicians. Surgeons are trained and passionate about operating on patients; that is what they do. It is not their purpose to spend time considering the patient’s health history and all the factors that go into making health decisions. That is for the doctor who is trained in internal medicine and who knows his patients, their histories, family life, job stress levels, habits and propensities. With that knowledge, the primary care physician is in a good position to quarterback his patients’ health care and make good recommendations.
I trust my primary care physician completely. He has taken the time to know me, my habits, what I will and won’t do and what I can handle well enough to give me good options. He won’t be doing the procedure he suggests, but he will know why to do it and who should be doing it. He is invaluable for advising me and suggesting the right next steps. He may not have the gifted hands of a top surgeon, but he is the most important doctor I have.
Your primary care lawyer will take you through a conflict assessment and recommendation. This will take a good, hard look at your unique circumstances, assess your financial and emotional bandwidth, consider the kind of person you are, and how quickly you need the dispute resolved, your level of risk aversion, how important the relationship is with the other party, and other factors. With that knowledge, he/she then takes the time to educate you on your options before giving you a recommendation as to which dispute resolution process option is right for you. If you skip this step and go first to a legal surgeon (a litigator), he will take you down the litigation road. That is what he wants to do, what he believes in and what he is supposed to do.
More often than not though, “legal surgery” (litigation) is not the best procedure for your situation. There might be a need for litigation in the future, if less risky, complicated and invasive options don’t achieve the desired results. But at the outset of the dispute, another option would likely be a better fit, given your circumstances and those of the other party.
There is one big difference between resolving legal disputes and addressing medical issues: When you opt for surgery and start the prep, nine times out of ten you end up having surgery, unless there a compelling reason why you shouldn’t. But when you opt for litigation and start down the road toward trial, nine times out of ten you will NOT have your trial, unless there is some compelling reason why you should. The chance of that trial ever happening, despite the years of time, and the financial and emotional investment in preparing for it, is less than 5%! Some time very close to the start of the trial (imagine yourself being right outside the operating room, about to be wheeled in), you will start discussing your options to trial and 95% of the time, you and your lawyer will opt for another process.
You could have chosen that option much earlier on in your dispute, if you had first received some good advice from your primary care lawyer. Your primary care lawyer would have saved you thousands of dollars and years of anxiety, while preserving important relationships and avoiding the drain on your emotions, energies and resources.
Like I said, my primary care physician is my most important and valuable doctor. Your primary care lawyer should be your most important and valuable lawyer. If you don’t have one, now is a good time to get one so that you can be proactive, well-advised and ready.
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