Unbundling commercial contractual conflicts

AFTER a few years on a multi-year IT joint project, a customer and an IT vendor are at an impasse. Project delivery has become an issue because of some sub-contractor problems. The client and the IT vendor have each already sunk in capital for the project. They cannot afford to have the relationship break down or to sue each other. What choices do they have?

In this particular case, the parties and their lawyers managed eventually to resolve the issues. But in many other instances, I did think that all parties could have been well served if a respected, neutral industry veteran had been at hand, if only to give their inputs on possible solutions and to express their views. Having someone “in the room” to benchmark and give everyone a reality check on technical issues and options would have helped immensely.

A new dispute resolution approach 

A new method of resolving contractual disputes in multi-year, high-value IT contracts is available and might just be the ticket to keep parties from driving off the litigation cliff.