Dispute Settlement Counsel

Have you thought about having a primary care lawyer (PCL) among your team of trusted advisors, the way you have a primary care physician, or financial advisor or accountant?

Most of us have a primary care physician (PCP), a trusted medical advisor, the first person we turn to when we have a medical situation, illness or injury.  Before you decide what approach to take, what kind of medical specialist you’ll need to see, you begin by going to your PCP and asking him/her to assess your situation.  Your PCP has the advantage of knowing you well, knowing your medical history and as a result, he/she is in a better position to assess your situation and give you tailored advice.  You also have the extra security of knowing and trusting your PCP.

If you are a small business or a family business, a non-profit organization, a social enterprise or entrepreneurial business, why not have the same kind of trusted advisor in your legal world?  There is great value to having a lawyer that knows your business well, that understands the goals and interest of your organization, knows how you think and approaches situations in a preventive, proactive way.

Let’s take that analogy to medicine one step further?  If you had a back problem, would your first call be to the orthopedic surgeon to start preparing for surgery?  Of course not.  Orthopedic surgeons, like trial lawyers, are masters at their craft.  I have the utmost respect for mine.  But he is my last call; not my first one.  There’s a time and a place for surgery and that is only when you have tried every other less-invasive, less risky, less life-altering approach or when nothing else will work.  Only when those efforts fail do you turn to the surgeon as a last resort.  Litigation should be looked at through the same lens: only as a last resort, when the other less damaging, less risky, and less intrusive procedures have been tried first.  You can always turn to the courts or an arbitrator if your non-adversarial, solutions-based efforts don’t succeed, or when your primary care lawyer advises you that in your circumstances, you need to litigate.  But it’s very difficult and very ineffective to try to switch to a non-adversarial, solutions-based approach after you have been embroiled in litigation for a couple of years and spend thousands of dollars.

Having a primary care lawyer is a wise and preventive investment in your legal well-being.  This is the role the Zeytoonian Center wants to play for its clients – that of the Primary Care Lawyer or “PCL”.  Our mission is to be our clients’ trusted legal counsel or PCL.  Our philosophy is to work with you to first take those preventive steps that help your business or organization avoid disputes.  Second, if you find yourself in a dispute, our purpose is to work with you to design and utilize that process that will best resolve your dispute.

In dispute resolution, our philosophy is always client-centered and solutions-based, not court-centered.  We want to work with you and advise you on the best way for you to solve your legal or business problem, not just take you down the traditional or typical path of litigation.  We are dedicated to keeping the control of both the process used to solve your problem as well as the decisions on the solution in your hands: “Sovereignty of the client” is one of our guiding principles.  Our role is to protect your rights, be your zealous advocate, advise you on the law, help you strategize in negotiations, and facilitate a good resolution.

Another guiding principle that sets us apart is that we approach a dispute from the goal of a negotiated resolution and settlement and work toward that goal by intention and design.  This is dramatically different from litigation and arbitration, which are both set up to prepare for trial or hearing.  Those are processes in which settlement is a default outcome, not the goal by design.  When we know that 98% of the cases filed in court end up settling, it makes a lot more sense to make settlement the goal by design and litigation the default process, rather than make the trial or hearing the goal and settlement the default process.

If this makes sense to you, having a primary care lawyer, especially one that believes in the sovereignty of the client and is solutions-based by design, would be a wise and preventive investment in your legal well-being.

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