As innovation has transformed the world and the legal industry, little has changed in the way most mediations are conducted. As professionals, we always need to consider how improvements in technology and processes can help us win better outcomes for our stakeholders. If you can relate to the following account, you owe it to your clients and to yourself to consider your alternatives to traditional mediation.   

First Court is growing rapidly, and we now have happy mediation clients in 41 states and the District of Columbia enjoying, average savings of 23 hours and 17% in litigation expenses per case. We want to celebrate that growth, welcome our new additions, and make sure that you are familiar with the whole team that is serving you.

 Many trials are won or lost in voir dire, yet it's often cited as the least predictable part of litigation. We want to reduce that risk and help clients win at this critical stage, so we developed a powerful way for you to learn the characteristics of your good and bad jurors, practice your questions with real laypeople in advance, and enter public voir dire knowing every possible bit of information about the people in your jury pool.

How often do you hire an expert knowing most of what they will say, but not how effective it will be in helping you win at trial? If you go into trial without knowing how effective your expert witness is at persuading jurors, you risk not only wasting the money spent on their fees, but also run the much greater risk of getting surprised by an adverse decision at trial.   

We recently completed a private jury trial in a major motor vehicle collision, and learned some fascinating lessons about how jurors value less visible injuries such as cognitive impairment.

We have helped thousands of clients win better outcomes in their lawsuits using our Private Jury Trial service over the last three decades. Woven into that success, we have heard two needs from our clients that we cannot meet with an all-day, in-person trial: 1) It's not cost effective for smaller cases, and 2) Because of the cost and time commitment, it's likely they can only do it once in a given case... even as the case evolves and new questions arise. 

 Settling a six figure personal injury case in an hour probably seems impossible to those in the legal profession who have not yet enjoyed the benefits of First Court's 1 Hour Mediation. 

Everyone involved in a lawsuit has some incentive to settle before the end of the year. Whether it's holiday closure (and cash) for injured parties, cash flow and tax benefits for law firms, or cleaning up the books for insurance carriers - our clients of every type tell us this time of year is a good inflection point to try to resolve open cases. 

You pay a premium for expert testimony. Why? To persuade jurors. But do you have any way to know if you are investing in the right expert(s)? There is no single rule to pick the best experts for each case, but we have had the chance to measure the effectiveness of thousands of experts over the years, and have identified a handful of key traits we see in expert witnesses that achieve their desired effect – persuading jurors.

Consider this fact pattern and outcome from a case we recently worked on: Plaintiff rear-ends trailer pulling a large load of logs. I repeat: Plaintiff rear-ends defendant. But the jurors assign most of the blame to the defendant… who was rear-ended.