Excerpt:
The “vanishing trial” is resulting in less courtroom experience for Hawaii’s litigators as parties on both sides of legal disputes seek faster and cheaper ways to resolve their differences.
...
Even as the recession caused a spike in the number of civil lawsuits filed in Hawaii’s circuit courts last year, jury trials continued to become increasingly rare.
In their place is alternative dispute resolution, in which businesses and individuals take their white-collar legal fights to a mediator or an arbitrator rather than trial.
As a result, the battle-weary litigators of years past are being forced to evolve or make way for a new crop of attorneys skilled in the art of negotiation.
...
Not all lawyers are pleased with the trend.
“This idea that trial is somehow an evil that must be avoided is a flawed vision of the process,” said Jim Bickerton, a partner with the Honolulu law firm Bickerton Lee Dang & Sullivan, who specializes in commercial and real estate litigation. “If you don’t periodically measure the value of cases through trial, how are the mediators and settlement conference judges able to tell you what your risks are for going to trial?”
...
Even as the recession caused a spike in the number of civil lawsuits filed in Hawaii’s circuit courts last year, jury trials continued to become increasingly rare.
In their place is alternative dispute resolution, in which businesses and individuals take their white-collar legal fights to a mediator or an arbitrator rather than trial.
As a result, the battle-weary litigators of years past are being forced to evolve or make way for a new crop of attorneys skilled in the art of negotiation.
...
Not all lawyers are pleased with the trend.
“This idea that trial is somehow an evil that must be avoided is a flawed vision of the process,” said Jim Bickerton, a partner with the Honolulu law firm Bickerton Lee Dang & Sullivan, who specializes in commercial and real estate litigation. “If you don’t periodically measure the value of cases through trial, how are the mediators and settlement conference judges able to tell you what your risks are for going to trial?”
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