Dispute Prevention Committee

Disputes in businesses and organizations affect individuals and impose costs in loss of resources, focus, and relationships while increasing risks.

The goal of dispute prevention is to assist businesses and organizations in decreasing risks by keeping contracts, projects, relationships, and processes on track by managing performance and relationship issues in real time to achieve desired and bargained for results.

The Dispute Resolution Section (DRS) recognizes negotiation, collaboration, mediation, neutral evaluation, arbitration, and emerging hybrid dispute resolution methods are indispensable tools to resolve disputes without resorting to litigation.

The Dispute Prevention Committee of the DRS is a relatively new committee that recognizes the growing concern among legal, risk management, and governance groups about the need to identify potential disruptive issues early, and to design and implement mechanisms to address them before they impair projects and relationships. The Committee aims to help members to understand the concept of dispute prevention, and acquire the mindset and tools required to prevent issues from spiraling into legal disputes. To that end, we will explore dispute prevention methods that can assist business and organization leaders to decrease the likelihood that conflicts will escalate into disputes to be litigated.

The Committee will work with other NYSBA sections and committees within and outside the Dispute Resolution Section, along with other organizations and individuals to promote a better understanding of dispute prevention, and develop the efficient and effective use of tools and processes to further the goal.

MEETINGS & PROGRAMS

Our regular meetings will be on Mondays 5:30 – 6:30 pm ET and programs will be Mondays be from 5:30 – 7:00 pm ET.

• 10 November 2025 – Program – Conflict Management: Preventing the Dispute before it begins
• 17 February 2026 – Program – Resistance and Opportunity: Using Dispute Prevention to preserve relationships
• 2 February 2026 – Membership Meeting
• 6 April 2026 – Program – How do you become a DP specialist and what’s happening globally
• 11 May 2026 – Final Membership Meeting

Committee Co-Chairs

• Verlyn Francis, J.D., LL.M., Isiko Dispute Resolution Consultants Inc.
• Richard I. Janvey, Esq., Diamond McCarthy LLP

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.