Dispute Prevention Committee

The Dispute Resolution Section strives to recognize negotiation, collaboration, mediation, neutral evaluation, arbitration, and emerging hybrid dispute resolution methods as indispensable legal tools. As such, the Section’s Dispute Prevention Committee is a new committee formed in recognition of the growing interest among legal, risk management and business communities to identify potentially disruptive issues early on and design mechanisms to address them before they impair projects and business relationships. The Committee aims to support business leaders’ desire to resolve problems before they spiral into legal disputes. To that end, we will explore dispute prevention methods that both in house and outside counsel can offer business leaders to avoid the escalation of conflicts that would result in litigation. The Committee will work with other Sections and Committees within and outside the Dispute Resolution Section to promote a better understanding of the dispute prevention tools available to practitioners as well as their efficient and effective use.

Committee Co-Chairs

• Myrna Barakat Friedman (mbarakat@mb-cap.com)
• Erin Gleason Alvarez (erin@gleasonalvarezadr.com)

Dispute Prevention Subcommittees

• Organizational dispute prevention: Focuses on internal opportunities for dispute prevention within an organization relating to HR or other matters.
• Elder law: Focuses on issues relating to surrogacy, guardianship, estates, etc.
• Commercial disputes: Focuses on disputes between organizations, which may include both small businesses and larger entities.
• International Outreach [and potentially domestic]: Focuses on outreach to international organizations to establish a relationship and better understand dispute prevention practices that are currently being used outside the U.S. This subcommittee may consider whether to extend the scope to specific domestic organizations as well.
• Collaborative Law: Focuses on the intersections between dispute prevention and collaborative law, along with programs to introduce these concepts to the other subcommittees’ work.
• Dispute prevention “marketing” and positioning: Explores ways to promote an understanding of dispute prevention techniques and how to communicate the benefits of these tools/processes to potential stakeholders.
• Construction Law: Focuses on dispute prevention as it relates to the construction industry.

Please contact Committee Co-Chairs Erin E. Gleason Alvarez at erin@gleasonalvarezadr.com and Myrna MBCAP at mbarakat@mb-cap.com for more information about these Subcommittees.