Saturday, November 3, 2007
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Subscribe Now: Feed Icon
About Me
- Resolve It Now
- Austin, Texas, United States
- Lee is a mediation consultant and serves on the board of directors of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) Austin and NAMI Texas. Lee earned a BA degree with an emphasis in marketing and graduated magna cum laude as a working adult. Until his recent retirement he was the Senior Warranty and Claims Manager for a Fortune 100 company. In this position he prevented, negotiated and resolved commercial disputes valued in the tens of millions of dollars.
1 comment:
The article "How to Make a Losing Argument" is a lesson to learn for lawyers but the advocacy legal system keeps lawyers at odds even if they learn these and other lessons. Sometimes the argument becomes an end itself with the people wanting resolution left waiting for the fireworks and legal bills to end.
The bombardments with troublesome motions are a normal part of attempting to settle a dispute with litigation. Attorneys are advocates and they operate in the court of law with a set of complex rules which allow them to fight and sometimes fight dirty on clients behalf. Advocacy is wrong when the fight becomes the main thing. Once fight starts know one knows where it will end.
The end point is known even when the time of ending is not known. The end point is either the courtroom steps just before trial or after a judge makes a decision based on the complex rules the lawyers and judge must live by. The fight never is about the needs of the principles involved it is about feeding a system that is neither understood nor benefits the people involved.
Lawyers really do attempt to be reasonable but once the fight starts as part of the legal advocacy process it is hard for one to not keep retaliating and adding to the pain of the principles. It is all too easy for one lawyer or the other to escalate the pain with a never ending legal battle that can rage for years before resolution is near.
Mediation is a valuable alternative that only cares about the objectives of the principles. The principles use their own sense of what is important to effectively determine the issues and the resolutions.
LeeB
Post a Comment