Court & LawPresent the dispute resolution options
The client came in to sue, and another process may fit their goals better. You explain the advantages, disadvantages and availability of the processes that could work, such as mediation, raise them again when the case changes and let the client choose. Virginia added this duty to the comments of Rules 1.2 and 1.4 of its Rules of Professional Conduct.
Free to startScenarios
- The client wants to sue a neighbor they will keep living next to.
- During a lawyer-to-lawyer negotiation, you learn something that makes mediation a better fit.
- Relational or emotional factors are driving the dispute.
The steps
- Start from the client's objectives: the client has the ultimate authority to decide the purposes of the representation.
- Advise the client about the advantages, disadvantages and availability of the dispute resolution processes that might be appropriate for those objectives.
- Tell the client about the processes that might be more appropriate to their goals than the one first chosen.
- Keep doing it as the matter moves: the duty to inform the client continues.
- When information from a lawyer-to-lawyer negotiation points to it, consider a process such as mediation, where the parties are more directly involved in resolving the dispute.
- When cost, effects on other people, or relational or emotional factors drive the dispute, include the other processes in your advice instead of purely technical legal advice.
- Inform the client of communications from the other party that may significantly affect settlement or resolution.
- Let the client decide, after consulting you, whether to accept a settlement offer.
To pass
- The client hears the advantages, disadvantages and availability of each appropriate process.
- The options are raised again when new information makes another process a better fit.
- The client makes the choice.
Official source
Virginia Rules of Professional Conduct
Rules 1.2, 1.4 and 2.1 of the Virginia Rules of Professional Conduct, with the official comments, published free by the Virginia State Bar.
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