How could I avoid a law suit?

Find information about mediation, arbitration, conciliation, negotiation and other aspects of alternative dispute resolution.

Parties involved in a dispute, or ‘disputants’, may prefer to avoid litigation and resolve their disputes in other ways. This can be for a variety of reasons including confidentiality, cost and speed. Alternatives to litigation are collectively known as ‘alternative dispute resolution’ or ‘ADR’ for short.

Resolutions can be achieved cheaper and faster than litigation in some cases, and the parties may agree to keep matters raised in the course of the dispute confidential. The confidentiality aspect of ADR can be very attractive where parties are reluctant to air their dirty laundry in open public forums such as the courts. ADR can also hold attraction for those hoping to preserve a productive relationship despite a problem. That relationship may be able to be maintained if the problem can be resolved by cooperation, whereas there might be little chance of that once an adversarial court case is filed.

Alternative dispute resolution options include:

1. negotiation;

2. conciliation;

3. mediation; and

4. arbitration.  Continue reading How could I avoid a law suit?

What could I do about a legal problem?

This website contains a lot of information. Some parts might be relevant to a particular difficulty but most will not. Several parts might all turn out to be relevant at the same time, and each of them relating to a different step or process. That is because there is usually more than one way to resolve a dispute and you will have to decide which option is the best one for you. This article explains how to figure out which parts of this website could be relevant. Please see the law dictionary for definitions of terms that are used.

Please note that this article only deals with some types of civil disputes. It does not cover crimes or family law matters.

In this article:

  • Consider taking legal advice
  • What is the problem?
  • Identify and assess the issues
  • Consider the options
  • Raise the problem
  • Contracts
  • When there is no response
  • Leveraging security
  • Credit reporting
  • Threat of litigation
  • Claiming legal costs
  • Claiming interest
  • Statutory demands
  • If there is (still) no response to any threat, demand or other action
  • Abandoning the matter
  • Attempting to negotiate or engage in alternative dispute resolution
  • Giving up control over your part of the problem or taking control of other parts
  • Commencing litigation
  • Assessing risks and rewards
  • Assessing costs and benefits
  • When an argument is raised

Continue reading What could I do about a legal problem?