When I came to the bar as a young lawyer in 1963 our mentality was that litigation was the best way for our clients civil interests to be properly adjudicated. Today we live in a different world.
Experience is a teacher.
Therefore, I would like to put to my colleagues at the bar that proposition that in some situations we attorneys are better serving our clients interests in construction cases by at least considering voluntary submission of our clients disputes to arbitration, rather than blindly handling then in the usual litigation mode. There are pros and cons, of course. Arbitration can consensually be sought at any stage of a dispute, even after litigation and discovery have commenced. One of the pros is that both state and federal judges are apt to kiss you for lessening their already crowded dockets. Generally speaking one can almost always handle an arbitration much more quickly from start to finish than one can handle the same dispute in the courts-that is the very nature of the beast.