Just Resolve for

Small Business

Construction

Start-ups & Investors

Lawyers

Big Business

Employees

Small Business

Small Businesses can ill-afford the distractions, costs, and delays of legal disputes. Just Resolve lets you focus on what you do best:

Specify us in contracts and get free “insurance” against costly litigation
Bridge the gap: Quit suffering extortion from crazies and opportunists while having to forego valid claims because of high legal costs
Use us only when negotiations fail, and then get fast, affordable, real justice
Enhance your company’s image and reputation as a business partner
Potentially save valued relationships when someone has made a mistake
Propose us and learn much about who you are doing business with

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Construction

Construction disputes cause costly domino delays and other consequences that can destroy often-narrow profit margins. Just Resolve slashes both these risks and losses in several ways:

Specify us in contracts and get free “insurance” against costly litigation
Bridge the gap: Quit suffering extortion from crazies and opportunists while having to forego valid claims because of high legal costs
Save time by pre-selecting neutral arbiters with specific expertise
Use us only when negotiations fail, and then get fast, affordable, real justice as either an advisory recommendation or binding decision
Enhance your company’s image and reputation as a business partner
Potentially save valued relationships when someone has made a mistake
Propose us and learn much about who you are doing business with
Use two-tiered dispute resolution clauses to assure correct paths for limited and high-stakes disputes

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Start-ups & Investors

At the beginning of any venture, both investor and company capital are precious. Just Resolve preserves that capital for its intended uses:

Free “insurance” for start-ups and investors against costly litigation
Doesn’t disrupt trusted advisors’ roles
Dramatically reduces everyone’s time and costs when in a dispute
Propose it and learn much about who you are doing business with
Enhance everyone’s reputations and relationships as business partners

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Lawyers

Just Resolve is a complementary tool for lawyers to better serve their clients:

For litigators

A reliable place to refer uneconomic disputes that still need justice
The way to deliver better net results to clients in limited-stakes disputes
A powerful negotiating tool that exposes posturing and improves your ability to reach an early settlement of differences
Can be a binding process or an early neutral evaluation option
Enhance your role as a trusted advisor
Know that you’ve put your client’s overall best interests first

For transactional attorneys (i.e., by specifying just resolve in contracts …):

Give your clients free “insurance” against litigation with commercial partners
Keep your role as trusted counsel and advisor of first resort
Dramatically reduce your clients’ time and costs when in disputes
Gain key insights about the people with whom your clients are doing business
Enable clients to get real, proportional justice in common business disputes
Enhance your clients’ reputations and relationships as business partners
Use two-tiered and custom dispute resolution clauses to assure correct paths for limited and high-stakes disputes

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Big Business

No matter how big the business, some disputes lack the high stakes to warrant using outside counsel. This is where Just Resolve enhances company profits by saving time, money, and unproductive distractions:

Specify us in contracts and get free “insurance” against costly litigation
Bridge the gap: Quit suffering extortion from crazies and opportunists while having to forego valid claims because of high legal costs
Use us only when negotiations fail, and then get fast, affordable, real justice
Enhance your company’s image and reputation as a business partner
Propose us and learn much about who you are doing business with
In negotiations, expose posturing and obtain more principled settlements
Use two-tiered dispute resolution clauses to assure correct paths for limited and high- stakes disputes
In a high-stakes case, use us for a cost-effective early neutral evaluation

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Employees

Just Resolve helps employers and employees with honest differences resolve problems better and more economically.

An independent and neutral alternative for quickly resolving grievances
Can be adopted in an employment agreement, handbook, or specific instance as either an advisory or binding process
Flexibility, affordability, and mutual dignity in one, simple “get-it-done” process
Settle legal claims without paying a big chunk in lawyer’s fees
Lets both sides’ savings in legal fees enable a just result
Employers earn and build a reputation for fairness
Employees avoid a public record and reputation of suing employers

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How does Just Resolve save time, money and stress compared to other alternative dispute methods?

Just Resolve uses Neutral-Driven Dispute Resolution (NDR), a method developed by Rob Christopher that is unlike litigation, arbitration, mediation, or other forms of dispute resolution in which an adversarial, lawyer-driven process leads to high costs. These costs typically consume or exceed the amount at stake in common disputes.

NDR uses neutral arbiters or experts to objectively investigate a dispute and render a fair decision that is binding on the parties. It eliminates the major sources of cost and delays typical of the advocate-driven legal process — discovery, trial preparation, briefings, formal pleadings, and evidentiary disputes, etc. Using NDR, disputes can be resolved in 3-7 weeks for a reasonable fixed fee through three steps:

Neutral team selection (and dispute definition)
Investigation (and analysis)
Decision (both tentative with feedback and final)

Consequently, NDR eliminates more than two-thirds of the work (and billable time) typically expended by each party’s attorney, staff, and paid industry experts. With no time spent on legal maneuvering, this fast, fair process also relieves a lot of the hidden costs of litigation, such as the parties’ distracted time and stress that accompany contracts and other business disputes.

What is a “limited-stakes dispute?"

Broadly, it is any dispute in which the legal costs of a formal, lawyer-driven adversarial process are likely to consume most or all of the financial stakes for each party. In practical terms, it is a dispute for which the financial stakes lie in that range between small claims cases (from which courts exclude lawyers, usually less than $5,000 or $10,000 in value) and high-stakes disputes like “bet-the-company” and other “must-win-at-any-cost” situations. Limited stakes disputes are important to at least one of the parties in principle or practical consequence. In other words, it’s a dispute whose outcome can make a difference between a project or transaction being profitable. The boundary between limited and high stakes is not fixed, though many conscientious lawyers discourage litigating claims below $300,000 to $500,000 because they expect that their time and legal fees will consume the stakes.

What does Just Resolve Cost?

Just Resolve’s services will usually cost each disputing party well less than one-fourth (25%) of the dispute value, or “stakes,” and in all events only a fraction of (usually 3-6X less than) adversarial alternatives, whether the parties agree to a fixed, not-to-exceed, or hourly-based fee. The fixed fee is an important innovation that does what many businesses have long wished for instead of the highly unpredictable costs of legal services by the billable hour. It also aligns the interests of the neutral professional(s) with those of the parties to invest time and cost proportionate to what is at stake. Finally, you can have justice that is affordable. For more information on what Just Resolve costs, see our pricing and total costs of litigation calculator.

Is a Just Resolve decision binding, and if so, how is it enforced?

Whether a Just Resolve decision is binding or advisory is up to the parties. The disputing parties decide in advance whether the process in any given case is binding. Just Resolve strongly recommends that the parties opt for a binding resolution so they realize the full benefits and savings of the process. The parties’ agreement is enforceable in court like any other contract, except in situations where the law expressly prohibits such agreements.

Can Just Resolve be written into contracts ahead of a potential dispute?

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