Advantages To Litigation: Fill & Download for Free

Well, you could:Publish this. If true (doubtful), you would become famous and likely end up as a professor of CS someplace cushy. If false, you might look a bit silly. Review might prevent that outcome.Try to patent this. It will cost money to patent and it will cost money to litigate. You might make money after suing people. Of course, after you patent this, many people might not use your invention. Some might research work-arounds.Find an application. Where would this make a huge difference in a product? Become a vendor of that product and use this advantage to out-compete others, gaining a virtual monopoly on the market.

Arbitration is… interesting. Lawyers refer to it as a “creature of contract.” It’s perhaps better thought of as the red-headed illegitimate bastard child of an illicit affair between contract law and civil procedure.There are a number of advantages to arbitration as a process over litigation, some of which advantage corporations and some of which are neutral.Neutral considerations:It’s cheaper.The cost of taking a simple case to trial is usually over $50,000. Civil trials are going the way of the dinosaur these days largely because of cost. Civil jury trial in particular are extremely rare. They require a lot of preparation, and that’s just really expensive. Most people won’t get enough back out of the suit to justify the cost.Arbitration, on the other hand, is less costly and requires less preparation for the most part. The rules of evidence tend to be a little more relaxed, and more.This favors both the consumer and the corporation.It’s faster.From the initial filing to the close of trial, a civil suit can take anywhere from one to five years, depending on complexity.Arbitration, in contrast, can take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months as a process. Less time = less money invested.The arbitrator might be more of an expert than a trial court judge.Trial court judges, especially in small counties, are not often specialized. They may not have ever dealt with that particular type of case. They may or may not know the law.Arbitrators, in contrast, may be experts in that particular area of the law and handle dozens of cases just like yours every year.Arbitration is often confidential.Lawsuits are public proceedings. Anything that comes out is public record.In contrast, depending on what the arbitration clause or rules you agreed to say, even the fact that you went to arbitration may be confidential. This is sometimes a good thing for litigants.Positive considerations for the consumer:It’s faster and cheaper.If you’re a consumer and you got hosed, it’s less work to collect in arbitration.There is some research that suggests consumers fare better than corporations in arbitration.This is disputed, but even the more conservative research shows that when consumers actually do fight something in arbitration, they have a better shot than they do at civil trial, actually.The up-front costs are often cheaper to the consumer.As a way to try to make sure that courts don’t refuse to enforce arbitration laws as unconscionable, corporations often bear the brunt of the up-front costs for arbitration. The cost to the consumer can often be $100 or less for claims less than $10,000. The costs of filing in a state court could easily be more, and the current filing fee in federal district court is over $400.Positive considerations to the corporation:Arbitration clauses are increasingly (with the blessing of the Supreme Court) able to prevent class actions.This is really shitty to the consumer. If the company screws 5 million people out of five bucks each, nobody is going to litigate that or even arbitrate that. And that’s $25 million into the corporate treasury. This was precisely the issue in AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion.Not only can arbitration clauses prevent class action lawsuits, they can now even prevent class action arbitration. And, corporations may legally force you to sign these arbitration agreements (including waivers) as a condition of your employment.This is important because…Arbitration is often confidential. Whether you win or lose in arbitration, you can’t talk about it. You can’t encourage the millions of other people who got screwed to also go to arbitration. If you win a million bucks, you can’t tell anyone about it. Great for the corporation, who doesn’t get the PR hit.It can be hard to get arbitration started.Again, arbitration is what lawyers call “a creature of contract.” You signed up to have the thing arbitrated when you signed the initial contract… including the rules about what process you need to go through to get into arbitration.That can include mediation before arbitration, acceptance of a claim for twice as much as you are asking or suffered damages for (which means if the company screwed you out of $100, if they offer you $200 to make up for it, even in the form of store credit, you have to take it or you’ll lose in arbitration) and more.You might have go to arbitration in a specific place, and show up in person to fight it. And because of scheduling, that might take place over multiple days spread out over multiple weeks. If you live in New York and you have to litigate in California, this is prohibitive, even if there’s a clause that pays all your costs… if you win.This is by design. The more difficult it is for you to get into arbitration, the more likely you are to eat the loss or just give up.There is essentially no appeals process.Once an arbitral award is issued, there are very narrow grounds to have it vacated.Worse than that, errors of fact or law are insufficient grounds to have an arbitral award vacated. The Supreme Court has upheld “improvident, even silly factfinding” on the part of arbitrators. So, if the arbitrator misheard you or even literally disregarded you entirely, even if the arbitrator misapplied the law, even if the arbitrator is mistaken about what the law is, you might still be screwed.Corporations can force you into arbitration almost entirely without your knowledge, even if the contract is illegal, and you are stuck with the results.The Supreme Court has long upheld arbitration clauses in “adhesion contracts.” We joked in law school that they’re called that because you can stick ’em to people as they walk by. Adhesion contracts are those contracts you never read when you sign up for most things that involve “terms and conditions” that you click “I agree” to.You agreed to an adhesion contract when you signed up for Quora. In fact, Quora’s terms and conditions include an arbitration clause.How many of you have ever read that whole “terms and conditions” for anything before hitting “I agree”? That “I agree” legally presumes you did. The reality is not legally important.The contract you agreed to might even be illegal and otherwise unenforceable, and you can still get stuck in arbitration hell where the arbitrator decides whether or not the contract is valid and enforceable, and if you remember, mistake or misapplication of the law does not provide grounds for you to get the award set aside.So, if you clicked “I agree” to an adhesion contract that entitled Quora to harvest your organs while you are still alive, and you went to arbitration and the arbitrator said, “well, if they stop your heart, technically you aren’t alive, so they can have your kidneys, and I don’t see any law that says otherwise,” that might potentially not be enough for a court to overturn the award.All of this is designed to try to get you, the consumer, to settle rather than get a judgment against the corporation. And since they have the power on their side, they’ll probably get a better settlement than the award or a lawsuit.There are measures pending in Congress to try to fix some of this, such as the Federal Arbitration Fairness Act, but it’s been shot down or died in committee for over a decade. Corporate lobbyists have been fighting to neuter it or kill it with everything they have.

Advocacy is a very advanced and growing profession. The legal profession is intellectually stimulating, challenging, and always changing. Being a lawyer we can help people and can help in making new laws. It depends on individual if he/she want to be general practitioner or specialists. Legal outsourcing is the emerging field in this profession. Some persons choose to practice corporate law and other love being a litigation lawyer who chooses to litigate in law courts.Now a day as the foreign investments is in trend in the business world. Many multinational companies hire lawyers for their personal corporate affairs. These lawyers get the small sphere to deal with only corporate related issues. On the other hand, a litigating lawyer deals with all type of cases he deals with almost every situations which people confront in their general life. So it’s always advantageous to practice as a litigating lawyer in courts as the knowledge, experience, and exposure is more in courts. But there is no doubt that the corporate firms and MNC’s offer corporate lawyers a very handsome amount of packages. So it all depend upon the person's priority which field he chooses for practice whether in India, US or any other place.