Today litigation and dispute resolution is a fact of life for everyone in business. Business failure often leads to bitterness and a desire to blame someone--a supplier, a seller, a competitor or even a colleague--for the result. Even success can breed external and sometimes even internal conflict from those seeking their fair (or fairer) share of the rewards success brings.
Understanding people and frequent sources of disputes--ambiguous contract language, practices inconsistent with contractual obligations, regulatory requirements, envy, miscommunication and even deceit--and the legal processes available to resolve them, the Kitch firm maintains a highly- successful commercial litigation practice, including prelitigation, in-court litigation, or alternative resolution forums like mediation and arbitration.
The kinds of commercial cases we handle are diverse, and include: contract and other business disputes, antitrust, construction, securities, shareholder and partner disagreements and larger collections. Our clients are just as diverse, and include commercial businesses, educational institutions, healthcare providers--even municipal organizations.
The practice starts with risk management, helping clients define clear provisions and dispute resolution language in agreements and helping clients identify their legal alternatives at an early point. Using our knowledge of litigation and our credibility as counsel in these matters, we are often able to successfully resolve disputes before they move into the formal phase of litigation or arbitration.
If litigation is needed, we work with our clients to develop the best strategy. Much like the businesses that we represent, we recommend a plan for evaluating and implementing the litigation strategy and actions. Cost-efficiency is always a goal and frequently the paper and electronic discovery becomes even more voluminous involving even more technical witnesses in the process of uncovering the facts. As a result, the budget is an integral part of the plan. We provide realistic and achievable benchmarks for assessing the progress of the case and the performance compared with the budget. The client is involved at all points in the case to enhance the client's understanding of the legal and factual issues--with the goal of achieving a successful resolution of the matter.
One key component of our success in litigating commercial cases and staying within the budget is our familiarity with available technology for document and discovery management as well as electronic discovery, data storage and retrieval technologies. We also use online repositories for extensive collaboration with the client's internal and external experts as well as online reporting to allow the client access to all of the file information when desired.
