Analyzing Issues in Disputes

 

Analyzing Issues in Disputes

I find it useful to break down the issues in disputes into:

    • factual and evidentiary issues – what happened and how can that be shown
    • legal issues – what does the law say about situations like this
    • financial issues – what are the costs and benefits of various options for dealing with the matters in dispute
    • tactical issues – issues of timing, the sequence of dealing with issues and procedural choices for resolving the dispute
    • emotional issues – how the parties feel about the dispute

Lawyers in dealing with disputes have traditionally focused on legal issues and they have focused on the courts’ litigation procedures. But now, in a time when almost all cases outside court lawyers must also deal with this larger range of issues. Of these different kinds of issues, the emotional issues are often the most important. Lawyers see many cases when the facts, the law, finances, and their tactical considerations all very much against them, but they will not settle. Anger or some other compelling emotion governs what they will do, and that emotion must be given at least as much attention as the other issues if settlement is to be achieved.

Lawyers and others often make the mistake of believing that settlement is, or at least should be, governed by the same rules of evidence, relevance and logic as the legal issues that are the substance of legal analysis and of the court process for adjudicating disputes. But these different sorts of issues have their own dynamics and considerations, especially in the context of negotiations leading to settlement. Lawyers need to be alive to these differences and to expand the range of approaches that they bring to bring to the table. For there is no doubt that the reality is that parties in dispute are affected by all of these sorts of issues and the skill of counsel is often in balancing the particular balance of trade-offs among these factors in coming to a settlement which best meets their clients’ interests.


mikehasler