When you have a dispute with someone that you cannot settle by yourself, the typical answer is to file a lawsuit. Then both sides have to pay their attorneys for pleadings, motions, memoranda of law, interrogatories, depositions, objections, arguments, and status conferences. And then after all of that, 90% of the time, the lawsuit ends up settling, years after it started.
In court, there is only one way of doing things, with lots of rules, and most people will tell you it is really frustrating, slow and expensive. ALTERNATIVE DISPUTE RESOLUTION (ADR) offers you a variety of ways that an experienced person (the Neutral) can help resolve disputes out of court.
You can learn about ADR by clicking HERE to listen to a podcast.
One way is mediation – when the Neutral helps both sides come to an agreement that everyone agrees is fair, and maybe even come up with new ways for them to deal with each other. Another way is arbitration – when the Neutral holds hearings, hears testimony, and issues a decision just like a judge, but much faster, with much less formality, and at times of the day and in places that are convenient for the parties and the witnesses.
In these and other ways, you keep more control over the process, the outcome, how long it takes to get there, and how much money it costs you.
The key to ADR is that both sides work to agree. Tobey Oxholm has served as a Neutral for over 30 years in hundreds of mediations and arbitrations. Once a senior partner in a large Pennsylvania law firm and the president of a university, he retired to his home in Gouldsboro and now usually charges only $150 per hour – split evenly between the parties – to help people work together to resolve their disputes fairly, more quickly and less expensively than fighting in court. Visit his website to learn more about him, and about ADR.
Call Today: 215.783.2329
Gouldsboro PA
