How to resolve a lawsuit without taking a second unreasonable leap of faith.

Whenever you deal with people in business or personal life, you are going to have to be willing to trust them to some extent.  There is always some leap of faith required.  Some level of trust is healthy.  Its often the magnet that draws people together.  However, its often relied upon too much to try to fill holes and hold things together whenever their are gaps in understandings.  “How should we handle this, one person says.  The other responds, just trust me.”  The biggest challenge is to determine just how much trust to again place in another person.

Once a dispute occurs, disappointment, anger and fear set in.  Trust between the parties is broken. People stop talking to one another.  Everything grinds to a halt.  The only way to move forward together is to figure out a way to restore trust.  However, no one wants to take a second leap of faith. 

Litigation builds walls between people and leaves little room to re-build trust.

You can hire a lawyer to try to seek a judgment or determinations from a court exactly what are your legal rights and obligations; but, that still won’t resolve the dispute.  In the end, neither judges nor juries resolve disputes, only the people do.

Courts provide little or no opportunities for the parties to communicate freely or re-establish any trust to work towards an agreement.  Litigation builds walls between people.  Litigation alone is an “isolationist” strategy proven time and time again to fall short of resolving anything.  More than 19 out of every 20 people who file lawsuits, later realize its better to breakdown these walls, dismiss their cases and figure out how to settle their problems out of court.

You need a safe zone with confidential channels to communicate and rebuild trust.

Almost all conflicts and disputes are resolved by negotiation and private agreement.  Sooner or later, you will realize that at least some reduced level of trust must be exchanged to fill some of the gaps, risks and uncertainty that no lawyer, judge or jury can ever guarantee to satisfy.

If you start by placing this trust in a mediator during a confidential mediation conference, you won’t have to take a second leap of faith. You will be able to ask questions, communicate, analyze and make a much more informed decision without the fear or pressure or other influences which may have impeded your decision-making when you decided to enter into the failed agreement or relationship in the first place.