Arbitration & Mediation

When you lift the rock of legal practice off your back . . .

By Victoria Pynchon

. . . you tend to escape gravity in a fury of creative activity.

Like this!  The Spring issue of the r.kv.r.y. quarterly literary journal, which has just been published and is quickly approaching it's fourth anniversary.  (see also r.kv.r.y.'s blog here!)

If you, like me, chose law as the default profession of the liberal arts major (Literature here, natch) check out our latest issue, which is full of great stuff -- more than a little of which has been written by lawyers.

Don't get me wrong -- I LOVED legal practice and am even more passionate about mediating the resolution of the type of case I litigated for 25 years -- complex commercial litigation.  

NEGOTIATING the resolution of these cases is really just the final part of my legal career -- a turn in the road that I'm more than pleased to have followed, particularly as our national recession deepens. 

Why?  Because negotiated resolutions don't depend upon court calendars, cranky and often unpredicatable Judges (my friends on the Bench excluded) or someone else's idea (12 people good and true; three arbitrators; one Judge, etc.) of what the most beneficial and fair solution to a business problem might be.

It's all of a piece, you see, because story -- as in those written by r.kv.r.y.'s contributors -- is more important to the mediated settlement of a dispute than a litigated resolution.  In mediation, we dress the "legal case" back up in all of its compelling though often messy particulars; we put the flesh and blood people back into the business problems that led them to lawyers in the first instance, permitting them do with their mutual conflict what they do best -- create a commercial solution to a business problem.  

Story. Self-determination.  Justice.

Full post as published by Settle It Now Negotiation Blog on April 15, 2008 (boomark / email).