Arbitration & Mediation

Pre-Trial Discovery Decreases Likelihood of Settlement

Posted on February 07, 2009

Diagnosis and Cure for BigLaw Layoffs? Revisiting the Gauntlet

Posted on February 07, 2009

How the "Big Kids" Settle IP Litigation at JD Supra

Posted on February 04, 2009
SUMMARY [from JD SUPRA]: On December 22, 2008, GateHouse Media sued the New York Times, alleging that the "hyper-local" news aggregation pages on the New York Times-owned site Boston.com infringed its copyright and trademark rights. At the judge's order, the case proceeded on an extraordinarily expedited basis, with a bench trial set to begin on January 26, 2009...

Business Risk Exclusions Do Not Preclude Coverage for Non-Defective Work even if CAUSED by Defective Work

Posted on February 02, 2009
Because litigation is so often settled with insurance dollars, from time to time we bring you updates on recent judicial interpretations of common policy terms.  The following article answers the question in the Fifth Circuit whether CGL policies cover certain types of construction defect claims...

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Outside the Box: Family Raffles Million Dollar Home

Posted on February 01, 2009
(right:  $24 million house from the Malibu Real Estate Blog) Outside the box thinking to avoid foreclosure from MSNBC Woman Wins Million Dollar House in Raffle. It was no ordinary raffle Friday for the 24,000 people who brought a $50 lottery ticket...

Litigation, Negotiation, Mediation, Oh My! The CharonQC Podcast

Posted on February 01, 2009
It's the British, of course, who we have to thank for the common law, the adversarial system of justice and that most lyrical denunciation of lawyers' passionate pursuit of legal procedure, Bleak House.  Charon QC is a serial podcaster, writer and producer of the satiric online soap opera West London Man, founder of the largest private law school in Great Britain, and all around QC about town...

Negotiating with Pirates: Squeeze Every Penny Out of the Deal

Posted on January 31, 2009
In Hijacked on the High Seas When Somali Pirates Attacked, They Kicked Off 56 Days of Drama Over the Fate of a Ship and 28 Crewmen, The Wall Street Journal details the negotiation strategy and tactics that resulted in the release of the hijacked ship and its crew...

Negotiating Litigation: First You Have to Win

Posted on January 30, 2009
I play squash. I learned to play the game when living in New York and continued to play at U.C. Davis (Law School) which had both regulation courts and racquets to lend.  At a time when racquetball courts were being constructed with the speed of social media sites, I continued playing squash for pretty much one reason:  I'm a woman and just about any (mostly male) colleague I played with could beat me out of sheer physical strength...

Negotiating Law Firm Survival with the Complete Lawyer

Posted on January 28, 2009
Savvy Lawyers Value Their Human Capital by Victoria Pynchon and Gini Nelson at The Complete Lawyer. These are hard times and none of us is immune. I’ve been here before. In the early 1990s, my law firm announced we would ride out the economic crisis by henceforth buying legal pads without our firm name embossed on the binding...

When Negotiation Fails, Do You Flip a Coin? Grab a Random Stranger?

Posted on January 27, 2009
Wheat and Chaff: Juries and Litigation Let me tell you a short story. A senior in-house lawyer is meeting with the CEO to talk about a problem the in-house lawyer had been asked to solve.  The in-house lawyer describes how his efforts at negotiation had failed, so he had taken steps to find a random person off the street so that person could resolve the problem for the in-house lawyer...

Negotiating Foreclosure

Posted on January 26, 2009
If you live in Ohio, there's some hope that you can negotiate your way out of foreclosure with a Court-annexed foreclosure mediation program.  See Foreclosure filings rise in five counties at the the Crescent News. Excerpt below. We ask our readers around the country to please let us know if they have similar foreclosure mediation programs in their state...

Devil in the Details: the Deal, the Whole Deal and Nothing But the Deal

Posted on January 23, 2009
It's getting very late in hour eleven of the mediation and everyone is tired and cranky.  We've agreed upon: the total sum of the settlement; the period of time over which the settlement will be paid; the Stipulated Judgment in the event of default; and, the amount of the Stipulated Judgment (far more than the agreed upon settlement sum)...

Devil in the Details: Sticker Term Shock

Posted on January 21, 2009
The anger, suspicion and ill will that has characterized the first eight hours of this mutli-party, eight-figure antitrust mediation is about to heightened as I deliver Defendants' terms:  they will pay the settlement agreed upon in six equal yearly installments over three full years without any security to back it up...

The Devil in the Details: When Do You First Talk Terms?

Posted on January 19, 2009
As you'll recall, we're in hour nine of the mediation.  The parties have finally agreed to settle the antitrust litigation the Court ordered them to mediate ("we won't settle; we'll only be here for an hour").  Defense counsel wants to write up the "deal points" and make a quick getaway...

You've Settled? With a Term Sheet? The Devil in the Details

Posted on January 16, 2009
It's 8 p.m. and you've just spent nine straight hours negotiating the settlement of complex commercial litigation with multiple parties that was filed before George Bush first took office.  The case has been up on appeal twice and is now scheudled for trial in February...

The Forthright Negotiator "Rule" and Creative Ambiguity at Adams Drafting

Posted on January 14, 2009
Anyone who's been living in outer Mongolia for the past couple of years should head on over to Adams Drafting straight away.  Why?  Because once you negotiate the best deal you can, you have to write it up on the best terms you can.  Hence the need -- yes need -- for Adams' Drafting...

Negotiating the Recession: Networking Wisdom in Mentoring Circles

Posted on January 14, 2009
I've always recommended barter when cash is tight.  In an early post entitled The Benefits of Barter, I explained how interest-based barter is not simply for small-fry.  AT&T used interest-based negotiation tactics and bartering in its 1999 fight with Comcast Corporation for the acquisition of MediaOne Group...

Texas Bar Association You Tube Ideals that Unite Us

Posted on January 09, 2009
 Here's good news for the new year!   2008-2009 YouTube Contest - Ideals that Unite Us $2,500 scholarship for under 18 winner /        $2,500 cash prizes for 18 and over, People's Choice, and Classroom winners Winners also receive an expense-paid       trip to the awards presentation in       April 2009 Starting Sept...

Five Negotiation Rules to Beat the Recession Blues

Posted on January 09, 2009
Before you start bargaining your way through the current recession, you need to decide which of your expenses might be negotiable. Your office or residential rent?  I have friends who have successfully negotiated reductions mid-lease on the strength of their desirability as tenants and good relationships with their landlord...

Conflict: It's ALL Cross-Cultural

Posted on January 08, 2009
There's a great new LinkedIn Group Mediators and Peacemakers that anyone interested in the dynamics of conflict and its resolution should think about joining.  Recently, a group member posed this question: How do you as a mediator recognize the signs of cross cultural differences and how do you resolve that type of dispute? How often do you come across this type of dispute? I was thinking about how I might answer it when I noticed that my colleague and friend, mediation guru Lee Jay Berman, had taken the time to jot down his thoughts, which were better than any I was having, yet precisely expressed my own experience mediating conflict...

Do You Need to Understand Your Legal Rights to Serve Your Interests?

Posted on January 08, 2009
Daily Journal Newswire Articles www.dailyjournal.com © 2009 The Daily Journal Corporation. All rights reserved.   FORUM (FORUM & FOCUS)  •  Jan...

Blawg Review 2008 Blawg Review of the Year Nominations

Posted on January 04, 2009
NEWS ALERT:  I'm not working here.  If blogging isn't fun or compelling in some other way - if I'm not just BURSTING to share something with my readers, I'm not doing it.  The same is true for Blawg Review.  If it's not laugh out loud funny, genuinely inspiring or impossible to put down (the well told tale) I'm not reading it...

You Can't Obtain a Favorable Settlement if You're Not a Formidable Adversary

Posted on December 29, 2008
The lowest level, most critical, most easily learned (you can even use a cheat sheet!) and most shockingly ignored skill is authenticating documents and bringing them within the available exceptions to the hearsay rule. As we wade ever deeper into the waters of electronic discovery, E-Commerce Law provides us with the Internet Evidence Series below...

Waging War, Collateral Damage & Arbitrated Resolutions

Posted on December 29, 2008
I've directed my readers to Adir Waldman's fine book Arbitrating Armed Conflict before.  Now that there is pitched battle in the Middle East with significant civilian casualties, I once again recommend Adir's book to anyone who wishes to look beyond taking sides...

Los Angeles Attorneys Needed as Mock Trial Judges Martin Luther King, Jr. Weekend

Posted on December 28, 2008
Dear Colleagues: On behalf of the UCLA Mock Trial Program and the UCLA Anderson School of Management, I am inviting you to volunteer as a trial judge or scoring judge at the 2009 UCLA Mock Trial Invitational Competition on Martin Luther King weekend, January 17-19, 2009...

It's Not About the Money; It's About Justice

Posted on December 27, 2008
I'd stop flogging this dead horse if I didn't have to weekly convince litigants of their own enduring human tendency to prefer relative well-being over absolute material possessions. This week, that "news" is brought to you by the New York Times to explain why a surprising number of us have not been made terribly unhappy as our financial fortunes decline...

Likelihood of Confusion's Chanukah Blawg Review Mashup

Posted on December 23, 2008
LIKELIHOOD OF CONFUSION® hosts Blawg Review # 191 celebrating the Festival of Lights and wishing all of us   ?? ???? ??? or    Happy Chanukah!  We here in the Goldberg-Pynchon household celebrate both Chanukah and Christmas, as you can see from the really really bad iPhone photo of last night's menorah blazing before the tree in the background...

Likelihood of Confusion's Chanukah Blawg Review Mashup

Posted on December 23, 2008
LIKELIHOOD OF CONFUSION® hosts Blawg Review # 191 celebrating the Festival of Lights and wishing all of us   ?? ???? ??? or    Happy Chanukah!  We here in the Goldberg-Pynchon household celebrate both Chanukah and Christmas, as you can see from the really really bad iPhone photo of last night's menorah blazing before the tree in the background...

Online or Off, The Winning Technology to Create Community is Respectful, Collaborative and Reciprocal

Posted on December 22, 2008
pCheck out a href="http://www.successful-blog.com/work-with-liz/"Liz Straus'/a a href="http://www.successful-blog.com/1/25-traits-of-twitter-folks-i-admire-and-25-folks-who-have-them/"25 Traits of Twitter Folks I Admire and 25 Folks Who Have Them/a.nbsp; These quot;traitsquot; are in fact disciplines...

For Your Attorney Holiday Book Gift List: Conflict Revolution

Posted on December 20, 2008
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