Mission
The practice represents businesses in commercial litigation and arbitration involving contracts and financial disputes, commercial real estate, leases, development, and construction matters, and the collection of commercial debts.
Client Objectives
The Four Governing Cornerstones
Commercial litigation and arbitration represent significant unplanned risks for business clients. Winning at all cost—particularly to the client—is a shortsighted objective that does not serve the client’s best interests. Over Don's 30 years of experience, he employed the following four cornerstones to assist his clients in minimizing impacts of major commercial disputes.
I. Understand the Business Objectives. Litigation represents an extraordinary and typically unplanned expense. Identifying and understanding the business objectives for case resolution is critical to effective strategies. Business objectives in litigation can range from minimizing the expense to settlement at appropriate junctures to litigating a matter in order to avoid a "cottage industry" relitigating the same issue. A clear understanding of my clients’ objectives drives effective case strategies and budgeting.
II. Be A Trusted Advisor. Attorneys are fiduciaries. Being a trusted fiduciary means putting the client’s interests before your own at all times and observing total transparency. It also means providing options and solutions in addition to simply identifying legal problems. Speak in plain English; be transparent; and provide answers.
III. Be Proactive and Responsive. Understand the business beyond the lawsuit, and think ahead to address issues and developments in a timely and effective manner. Be responsive to client needs and communications, and anticipate and address those needs proactively. Add value whenever possible.
IV. Provide Reliable Budgets. Detailed, predictable and reliable litigation budgets provide clients with necessary information to make decisions and predict their legal spend. Effective budgeting together with proactive communication are critical to management’s understanding of the litigation's impact on the bottom line. Unlike many attorneys, Don aspires to the idea that litigation can be effectively budgeted and managed with a degree of predictability. When those unanticipated events do arise, proactive communication is essential to ongoing predictability of the legal spend.
