For In-House Counsel

Managing Complex Litigation

Litigation through outside counsel in our public court system is inherently difficult for in-house counsel to manage because it is designed to be adversarial. To win in an adversarial system, much of the work must be focused on preventing abuse by opposing counsel and obtaining procedural advantages that have little to do with the substance of the dispute.  The litigation process places unreasonable demands on corporate legal departments, executives, and business personnel, including overly broad document subpoenas and unnecessarily long depositions.  Attempting to manage public court litigation is a stressful distraction from in-house counsel’s more productive work because it is inherently unmanageable.  An entirely different system for resolving disputes is needed.  Comprehensive Adjudication provides that needed alternative.

Litigation also is inherently inefficient because each party pays separate legal counsel to research the same legal authorities, review the same documents, and attend the same depositions and court hearings.  Evidence and testimony they obtain in lengthy discovery proceedings must be repackaged multiple times for presentation to the court in a variety of pretrial motions. Several years later outside counsel presents the same evidence again to a jury, and then again in post-trial motions and, again, to an appellate court. The resulting cost, duplication of effort, and inefficiency are built-in to the basic structure of our public court system.

Outside counsel attempt to control the uncontrollable with complex systems for legal project management (LPM) and alternative fee arrangements (AFAs). But those efforts usually fail because they do not address the inherent inefficiency of our public court system.  Legal disputes cannot be managed effectively without a different system for deciding them. The Comprehensive Adjudication system for deciding legal disputes is gaining increased attention because it eliminates the root causes of the cost and inefficiency of litigation in our public court system.

An Alternative Fee Arrangement That Cuts Your Costs In Half

When the parties to a legal dispute choose to resolve it using Comprehensive Adjudication, they split the cost of hiring a single, neutral Adjudicator instead of each party paying separate counsel to largely duplicate each other’s work. The neutral Adjudicator vigorously searches for all the legal authority and evidence supporting the claimants and, just as vigorously, uncovers the law and evidence supporting the defendants. The Adjudication begins immediately after the Adjudicator is jointly selected. After reviewing the subpoenaed documents and cross-examining the witnesses under oath, the neutral Adjudicator swiftly decides the dispute with an enforceable written decision.

The expense each party would incur to retain separate counsel to investigate the same law and evidence in a public court case or an arbitration is automatically cut in half (or more) because the parties divide the cost of a single, neutral Adjudicator who performs all the necessary work. The time required to expertly decide the dispute is cut in half (or more) because the neutral Adjudicator can decide the thoroughly investigated dispute without presenting the same law and evidence repeatedly in court. The stress on your legal department is substantially reduced because in-house counsel no longer needs to manage the work of outside counsel in an extended adversarial process.

Comprehensive Adjudication Provides A More Expertly Analyzed Decision

Instead of entrusting the outcome of their dispute to a potentially biased jury, or a judge whose prior experience may have been in a different area of law, the parties jointly interview multiple recommended Adjudicator candidates and select an experienced, neutral litigator to both investigate and decide the controversy in an enforceable written decision.

Additional Features of Comprehensive Adjudication:

• The total cost of deciding the dispute can be capped in advance, divided by the parties, and paid in equal monthly installments.
• Outside litigation counsel is not necessary but the parties always have the option of using outside counsel more cost-effectively to monitor the Adjudicator’s work through regular joint status conferences with the Adjudicator.  Outside counsel also can be used to help frame the scope of the dispute at the outset of the process and to discuss the advisability of settlement with their clients as the relevant law and evidence is uncovered by the Adjudicator.
• The parties can jointly decide at the beginning of the Adjudication whether they would like the Adjudicator’s decision to be final or would prefer to have a right of appeal.  Any appeal is more swiftly decided by a private appellate specialist, jointly chosen by the parties in advance.

Bottom Line

Comprehensive Adjudication eliminates the unnecessary stress and distraction placed on in-house legal departments by litigation in the public courts or arbitration.  It resolves legal disputes with a more expertly analyzed, enforceable decision at less than half the cost of traditional litigation.

At your request, a Comprehensive Adjudication provider will contact your business’s legal adversary and determine their interest in a more efficient and cost-effective alternative dispute resolution system.

Learn more through the links below.

If your company is now facing a legal dispute and you would like to explore the possibility of resolving it through Comprehensive Adjudication instead of an extended court battle, click here to submit an inquiry. You will receive a prompt response from CASES Dispute Resolution providing you with an opportunity to discuss your company’s Comprehensive Adjudication options. At your company’s  request, CASES will:

• Contact your company’s legal adversary to determine whether an agreement to use Comprehensive Adjudication can be reached. 
• Suggest highly-credentialed candidates who could be selected as the neutral Adjudicator that will thoroughly investigate and decide the dispute. 
• Arrange for joint interviews and selection of an Adjudicator candidate. 
• Host regular joint status conferences between the Adjudicator and all parties to the dispute. 
• Monitor the Adjudication proceedings. 

Additional Resources