The Awesome Potential of Advanced Dispute Resolution with Rich Lee

Annual U.S. litigation cost estimates vary wildly.  Some say $250 billion, others say $430 billion. When you consider indirect costs, such as lost productivity or economic damages, some put the costs as high as  $1.5 trillion.

According to Statista, more than $5 billion is spent on employment litigation alone, and another $4.5 billion on commercial litigation. Litigation surrounding intellectual property, product liability, and real estate disputes, cost more than $3 billion each.  

Time is also a factor. As any litigator knows, resolution of a lawsuit can take three to five years on average. Some cases drag on for more than a decade.

Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) is increasingly attractive. Its benefits were  on full display during Covid lockdowns. It’s more convenient for almost everyone involved, especially in cross-country or cross-border disputes.  

An important and dangerous side effect of litigation expense is access to justice. Everyone will have disputes and conflicts in their lives, but not everyone can afford to go to court. 

More ADR is moving from mediation to arbitration partly because of the perceived finality of going to a panel. The American Arbitration Association says there were 25,000 ADR cases filed in 2020. Meanwhile, there are more than 400,000 federal suits and as many as 60 million state suits filed each year.

Listen to my interview with Rich Lee, CEO and Co-Founder, New Era/ADR as we discuss hot topics and issues involving what is referred to here as "Advanced Dispute Resolution." Before New Era/ADR, Rich was general counsel of a financial technology company that he helped to build, grow, and sell. Rich  serves as an advisor, board member, and investor in technology startups and venture funds and in a leadership role in the Economic Club of Chicago.  He serves on the national Leader’s Council of the Legal Services Corporation (a U.S. Senate-funded 501c3) and on the board of Illinois Legal Aid Online. He has a J.D. from Loyola University Chicago School of Law and a B.S. in Bioengineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

I hope you enjoy the episode. If so, give us a rating!

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This podcast is the audio companion to the Journal of Emerging Issues in Litigation. The Journal is a collaborative project between HB Litigation Conferences and the vLex Fastcase legal research family, which includes Full Court Press, Law Street Media, and Docket Alarm.

If you have comments, ideas, or wish to participate, please drop me a note at Editor@LitigationConferences.com.

Tom Hagy
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Host of the Emerging Litigation Podcast
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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:05

Welcome to the Emerging Litigation Podcast, a co-production of HB Litigation and critical legal content, custom content for law firms and litigation service providers, and the newly formed VLAC's Fast Case, your World of Legal Intelligence and our friends at LawStreetMedia. I'm your host, tom Hagee, litigation Content Producer and enthusiast and an average bongo player. Contact me if you have an idea for an episode. In addition to often being polite, I'm always looking for new twists on the law, whether it's a new regulation, legislation or an important new opinion, or it could be a development in the world that will test existing law or anything you're dying to share with other litigators, organizations or individuals. And, if you like what you hear, give us a rating. That always helps. And now here's today's episode. Today we're going to talk about alternative dispute resolution, rather advanced dispute resolution, as my guest seems to put it.

Speaker 2: 1:08

And.

Speaker 1: 1:08

I think he's right, and I know what you're thinking. I only choose funny topics, it's true. I do try to find humor in most things. It's a survival mechanism, and ADR may not be the richest source of gaffaws. You might think that I'm sure a competent comedian could do a lot with it, if only we knew one. But you've just got me. I might say, for example, if they produced the movie 12 Angry Men Today, it might be titled One Patient Listener, It'd be a blockbuster. And I can say this, though I do know some mediators. All I can say about that is that patients, sometimes it's merely a facade. There might be some holes in their drywall.

Speaker 1: 1:52

At home I did see a couple of ADR cartoons. A cartoonist named PC Vey showed a client and his attorney walking down the street and the client said you know, I'd like to avoid a costly and embarrassing trial, but I could use the media exposure. No one would ever do that today. No, would they? Another one named PS Mueller. His cartoon had two gun fighters in the old West. One of the gun fighters noticeably has a. His holster is empty. He says my gun's in the shop. Let's establish a dialogue. That may be the best tie in today, since the gun fighter may have found buying another gun was just too expensive.

Speaker 1: 2:33

Kind of like litigation. How's that? For a segue, Aggregate annual litigation costs in the United States. They vary wildly depending on who they come from. Of course, those in favor of tort reform, you know, those with the corporate bent, like the Chamber of Commerce. They'll come in with costs, cost estimates of around $430 billion and that was just. That was a few years ago. Others when they add in indirect costs like lost productivity and economic damages, they come up with more than a trillion or a trillion and a half in cost. But it's safe to say it's billions, maybe 250 billion in domestic litigation costs. Let's just go with that Half of which can go toward motion practice and discovery. According to statistics compiled by Statista, more than $5 billion is spent on employment litigation alone and four and a half billion on commercial litigation, IP litigation, product liability litigation and real estate. They each account for between $3 billion and $3.5 billion and, as any litigator knows, a resolution can take three to five years on average. I've seen them, of course, more than a decade before resolution is reached in court.

Speaker 1: 3:41

Adr is increasingly attractive these days. Its benefits were put on full display, particularly during COVID. It's obviously more convenient, especially if we're talking about cross country or cross border disputes. An important side effect of litigation expense is the access to justice. Everyone will have disputes and conflicts in their lives, but not everybody can afford to go to court. So there's that More and more ADR is moving from mediation to arbitration, apparently, According to AAA, the American Arbitration Association, because of the perceived finality of going to a panel.

Speaker 1: 4:21

Aaa says there were 25,000 ADR cases filed in 2020. That was the year of COVID. That's nothing, of course, compared to the 400,000 federal suits filed a year. Some estimates say as many as 60 million state suits are filed, but hey, it's something. Of course, not everything is appropriate for ADR, but much is. That's what I know.

Speaker 1: 4:46

Here's somebody who knows quite a bit more.

Speaker 1: 4:48

His name is Rich Lee. He is CEO and co-founder of New Era ADR. We talk about hot topics and issues involving advanced dispute resolution and the role of his company and himself in supporting this work. Before New Era, Rich was general counsel at a financial tech company that he helped build, grow and sell. Rich also serves as an advisor board member and investor in technology startups and venture funds and in the leadership role in the Economic Club of Chicago. He serves on the nation's leaders council on the Legal Services Corporation. He's a US Senate-funded 501C3 and on the board of the Illinois Legal Aid Online Group. He has a lot of grief from Loyola University, Chicago School of Law and a Bachelor of Science in Bioengineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana, Champaign.

Speaker 1: 5:47

With that, here is my interview with Rich Lee of New Era ADR. I hope you enjoy it. Rich Lee, thank you very much for talking to me today. Thanks for having me. Let's give some people more background about you and your company. What interested you in starting an ADR company and then tell me what's different about it from other ADR providers.

Speaker 2: 6:09

Yeah, so there's four of us who started the company and we're all experienced folks in the legal space. Three of us are external counsel, myself included, and we really built this to solve that age-old problem that we've experienced over and over as legal and compliance executives and organizations, which is why does it cost so much to resolve a legal dispute and why is it when we hear the word lawsuit whether you're a consumer, an employee or an organization we immediately picture and imagine a 12, 24, 36-month slog, and that's kind of the foundation of all decision-making in litigation. If you think about it, if you set aside the cases where somebody's done something wrong and it's very clear, cut the question of do you pursue a case or do you settle, or do you just acquiesce and not pursue it at all? A lot of it is driven by how much do I want to engage in the pain and expense of the current process, and I can't tell you how many conversations I've had with past CEOs when I was general counsel. I was general counsel with a couple of different companies before I launched New Era where I had to tell them we have a really good case. I can win this, either on the plaintiff side or the defense side, I can go collect the amount of money that we're owed or I can successfully defend this lawsuit, but I think we should settle, or but I think we should just let it lie, and it's always because of it's not worth it. And that's that business decision you hear folks talk about in litigation, about settling, but the business decisions really do. We engage in the pain.

Speaker 2: 8:00

And so for us, the reason we started New Era was we recognized, like certainly, we're going to build the tech. We all come from the tech world. We wanted to build the technology platform to facilitate arbitrations and mediations and make it just incredibly accessible and easy to use. But it was very clear to us early on that if we built the tech but we didn't change the underlying rules and the underlying rules were just the same rules that exist today and the court system legacy arbitration platforms then it's not going to be any better, faster or more efficient. It's just going to be the same pain but on a nicer looking platform.

Speaker 2: 8:40

And so for New Era, we want to step further and said let's, let's create that alternate platform and let's actually rethink what what of all the procedures that exist in courts are truly necessary for what we like to call the core 99% of litigation which is there's, like we recognize that there's always going to be a set of litigation that should stay in the courts and that should take a long time. You think about trade secret misappropriation cases, patent infringement, ip infringement cases, securities fraud. I can go on. Okay, that's actually not where most organizations feel the pain. It's actually the remaining 99 percent right, the $2 million breach of contract claim, the employee dispute or the consumer dispute and I say this from the corporate side, but then from the plaintiff side, it's the same right that, like you're making decisions about whether to pursue a case and you, as a plaintiff's attorney, are making decisions about whether to represent a client or pursue a case because of the pain and the expense of the existing process.

Speaker 2: 9:47

So we distill that down to this is all a product of you know, it's a product of the existing system. So we sat down, we thought you know a lot of the different kind of areas of litigation and created our own set of procedures that gets cases to resolution in 60 to 100 days. Right, this is the 12, 24, 36 months people are used to and all of it's still preserving. You know a lot of the core elements of litigation as we know it, but, you know, just rethinking and modifying different areas to make it more efficient for both sides, right, and so the point of it all simply being let's just get parties to be pragmatic, get to the point, present their arguments, have their arguments heard by, you know, an experienced arbitrator, a mediator, and just get it resolved.

Speaker 1: 10:36

So it sounds like part of what I'm just kind of hearing, two things. Well, one is that your approach and your processes, but the other, you know, is around technology. So if you could kind of describe for us, you know what is it. That is somebody who comes in with a case, what is their experience like, how is technology involved? And tell me about that.

Speaker 2: 10:58

Yeah, so simply, is a layer to the entire process that connects kind of everything right and it makes every, you know, the entire process just kind of smoother.

Speaker 2: 11:08

So everything from case filing to document management, evidence upload to the discovery process, to even scheduling with an arbitrator and mediator, right, I can't even tell you how many conversations we've had where that's actually been a sticking point, where people talk about spending months sometimes just trying to schedule time with, you know, an arbitrator or mediator, because you know you're trying to coordinate five different, very busy calendars the two parties, their attorneys and then, of course, the arbitrator and mediator themselves.

Speaker 2: 11:38

So, you know, rethinking that payments all the way through to the issuance of a binding decision or the issuance of a settlement agreement term sheet, everything takes place on a platform, facilitates all of it. You know a lot of us come from backgrounds where we're used to building, you know, technology platforms that also protect pretty sensitive information including myself, you know and so we've also already built in a lot of the security measures, you know, to make sure that, hey, this is a SOC2 certified platform. You know information is protected, you know, but everything lives, you know, in one place so you don't have kind of the emails flying back and forth, disparate systems trying to find different documents right. It's just incredibly easy for everybody to use. You know the actual technology.

Speaker 1: 12:26

So let's talk about just generally ADR. As everybody knows, with the pandemic it really boomed. A lot of things boomed during the pandemic. You know, in the courts too, my gosh, they even had virtual hearings, which was unheard of before. They would never do that, and so, according to GEMS, business jumped 30% in ADR in 2020. So did you see that just as a blip because of COVID, or do you see there's a shift, more of a shift toward ADR, probably more the latter, certainly not a blip.

Speaker 2: 13:03

I think COVID just kind of, you know, shined a light on an existing problem, which is the fact that, you know, our court documents are just overflowing right and there's just too many cases for judges to just get through efficiently.

Speaker 2: 13:19

And so what happened with COVID was, you know, the two-year delay turned into a four or five-year delay, or the one-year delay turned into a three-year delay, and of course people needed an outlet. But I think people are also seeing that this problem will just continue to exist right, and that's why arbitration was created in the first place, right years ago, and that's why the Federal Arbitration Act was passed right by Congress, you know, in the 1920s I believe, because they recognized that there should be an alternative path right for the myriad disputes that come up, you know, just in society. And so I think you know, now that people have seen that they can get efficient resolutions, or they can get some sort of resolution faster than you know, than they would get in the court system, you know folks will start to gravitate, you know, a little more towards the ADR.

Speaker 1: 14:15

What do you wish the illegal community understood better about ADR?

Speaker 2: 14:19

That there's a variety of experiences, right, and that's, you know.

Speaker 2: 14:24

I think some folks you know, based on one experience or another, I think, allow themselves, I think, to kind of be colored, you know, by that one experience you know and not give, you know, the ADR process a chance, right, and I think a lot of it, you know, comes down to kind of just essentially experience with different arbitrators or mediators, experience with different platforms, their rules, right, but understanding that ADR is a way to choose, kind of where you want to resolve disputes, right, and so there's different flavors, you know, and so being really thoughtful about that, I think, one and you know, really, I think, giving the process A few tries.

Speaker 2: 15:11

That said, I think a common complaint is that a lot of times ADR feels just way too much like court and that it basically is just private court. And, truthfully, that's why we started New Era was we've been in the ADR process, we've been to arbitration, we've also litigated in court and, yes, correct, we also agree that there's not a lot of difference. So I think it's really kind of thinking about what, actually, what was the real reason for the good or bad experiences, and to recognize that, hey, this is an alternative for specific types of disputes, it's not good for others, and being thoughtful about how you apply the use of ADR in an organization, but also on the consumer and employee side, that there are actually a lot of benefits to a faster process, that sometimes the confidentiality as well is a good reason and a positive for employees and consumers alike. And so I think understanding that there's a lot of great in the process and that it's not just simply black and white, so let's talk about some of the.

Speaker 1: 16:31

I'll put them generally in the category of ESG. But let's start with this. You're on the Leaders Council of the Legal Services Corporation, which funds legal aid groups. What's the biggest challenge for everyone? People in the US have access to justice, and does ADR play a role?

Speaker 2: 16:52

in this ADR absolutely plays a role. I think one of the biggest challenges is actually unrelated to ADR. I think one of the biggest challenges to access justice is the fact that a lot of folks who need it don't know that it's available. And then when it is available, a lot of times it's not very accessible and I think that's an area where ADR can play a role is a lot of times, and if you think about the unrepresented individual who can afford a lawyer, a lot of these folks just they have no outlet to resolve disputes with their tenants or with their landlord, with bill collectors, with any sort of other issues that directly impacts their lives, and the dispute resolution mechanisms a lot of times aren't very efficient, aren't very accessible either, for better or for worse. A lot of these folks they can't just take a day off work. They can't just take a day off work to go to court and sit there for hours on end for a hearing, like the ADR process, while shorter, if you make that virtual and make that accessible remotely, suddenly, instead of taking a day off work, maybe it's just logging in for an hour or taking a half day or something like that, and you give people more options, and then because the ADR system and process should be more efficient than courts, you also hopefully get the individuals to some sort of resolution far more efficiently and far faster than they would, if at all, anywhere else.

Speaker 2: 18:38

And for our part, one of the things we're doing is the way we've designed our platform. From day one actually and it's still kind of the underlying ethos to our entire product's development philosophy is, everything we build should be understandable and usable to that low-income, unrepresented individual, and if that person knows how to use the platform, then everybody else is going to fall in line the attorneys, the parties themselves, the arbitrators and mediators. And so we've built that. And now it's actually we're making it available to legal aid organizations and any organization that engages in any sort of these programs where they are potentially connecting underrepresented folks to some sort of dispute resolution mechanism. We can be that the tech behind it, and we can also provide the individuals behind it as well, and all of it pro bono. So that's that. I think there's a lot right that ADR can do in that space.

Speaker 1: 19:41

Yeah, I think for people with people of lower incomes, they wouldn't even have the resources, Unless it's the type of case where you can get a contingency fee or something, and usually those kind of things. You don't want to be the plaintiff in that case because it's usually horrible injuries or something, but you can get access that way. But then you hear stories people can't afford to get divorced or people can't afford to file bankruptcy, which I think is you know what I mean, and I don't know that that's not necessarily something addressed by your company, but it just points out that access to courts is expensive. It is, yeah, Well, along the lines I'm keeping with my ESG thing. So tell me about greener arbitrations.

Speaker 2: 20:36

Well, that's a pledge that's out there among ADR providers, arbitrators, other vendors to take steps to run more just, greener arbitrations For instance, not using hard copies, using electronic copies, doing things virtually if possible and not having to travel and incur the carbon footprint of having everybody in person. And, frankly, it's perfectly in line with everything we're doing around. Everything takes place electronically. We've designed our platform to allow people to, of course, share the documents, but also view them and use them all electronically, without the printouts. And, of course, our company's built on the assumption that everything on our system will be done virtually, although we're certainly, you know, if people want to use our system to manage the entire process, but then fully hearing in person, that's up to them. But yeah, in terms of our core principles, the greener arbitration pledge is certainly well in line with everything we're doing.

Speaker 1: 21:48

What about diversity? How important is diversity in ADR? When I say diversity, now I'll have to ask you what groups are we looking to be diverse? You're talking about the folks running ADR, the neutrals, or what Tell me about?

Speaker 2: 22:05

that I think, from an ADR perspective, the part that I think ADR providers and attorneys have some control over is the neutrals themselves, right, like who's presiding over your case? And diversity, I think, should be thought about in kind of every sense of the word, not just the traditional race, gender, nationality. Certainly that plays a big role and certainly there are a lot of folks that have pointed out that, hey, the ADR world right now is relatively homogenous. But I think, forgetting demographics for a while, I think the core of it is does your neutral bench, does the ADR world actually reflect the population which is, I mean, it's the point of diversity? And does the person who's presiding over a case really truly understand all of the issues that play, not just the law and not just the business. But take an employment example If it's a Gen Z-er in a dispute over, let's say, social media issue, something they did on social with the company, well you really really need someone to also just understand the technology, understand Gen Z mindset, be able to relate to a lot of different generations, a lot of different philosophies, how people approach the world. That part is a little harder.

Speaker 2: 23:35

It's something that we pay a lot of attention to and that we're being very deliberate about in terms of how we create the composition of our bench, and certainly we have our retired judges and retired lawyers, who are fantastic and really, really understand the law, but we're also adding a lot of very experienced attorneys to the bench as mediators and arbitrators, who also, of course, understand the law equally well, but have just some niche experience, whether it's with certain new technologies A good example could be Generative AI or Blockchain, web 3, crypto Even folks who just understand the back end of the financial system like when you hit trade on your Schwab account, your TD Ameritrade account, what actually happens to that trade People understand all that bring a depth of understanding to the mediation process, the arbitration process that I think someone who just knows the law really well and, of course, understands business still won't be able to bring.

Speaker 2: 24:35

So we've been very thoughtful about diversity in a very, very broad sense, but absolutely it plays a role and I think it's really, really important, especially if more and more cases come to the ADR role.

Speaker 1: 24:49

Yes, as I said before, I was talking to a jury expert and she was saying that diversity in trial panels is not just a matter. I will just do it because it's the right thing to do, but you get people coming from different backgrounds with different perspectives and different ways of looking at things, and that's valuable. And, as you were talking, I was wondering if you're handling a generative AI case. Do neutrals have consultants that they, or people that they can rely on with expertise, that maybe they may know the law and they know something about it? But what if they don't have expertise in artificial intelligence? What?

Speaker 2: 25:35

do they do? I think it's up to the neutral to hopefully go find someone who they can consult, but the problem a lot of times, though, is the person they consult also maybe billing the parties as well, sure, right, and so there's also that element of getting the parties by and to find the right consultant on generative AI, or, more commonly, just an accountant and a financial, a forensic accountant who understands accounting and can shed light on certain areas, especially if they're not brought as a witness, then it's, I think, on the neutral.

Speaker 1: 26:15

Let's jump back to technology for a minute. What emerging technologies do you think will change how ADR is handled?

Speaker 2: 26:21

I think certainly just the one that everybody's talking about, generative AI. I think these large language models will play a big role, but I think, iteratively, there's a lot of different applications and use cases for gen AI right now that can potentially make the ADR process more accessible. That can also make the lives of all the parties involved, including the neutrals, a little easier.

Speaker 1: 26:48

Is AI going to be making decisions for us?

Speaker 2: 26:51

I don't think yet. I don't think we'll get to the AI-generated legally enforceable decision just yet, just because I think the industry is not ready for that yet. You still need that human in the middle to apply, I think I mean soul to a decision and that kind of human touch to to a decision. But I think in some areas, you'll start to see where, at the end of the day, with Gen AI and LLMs, it's just like analytics from 10 years ago. It's still about the underlying data and so if there's enough data in a certain type of dispute, then I think you could potentially start to see some form of Gen AI chat bots, things like that that could potentially help resolve, I think, a lot of high-volume run-of-the-mill cases. But absolutely I think the Gen AI world or the Gen AI tools out there will change a lot of legal practice, and I think that's an entire podcast in itself.

Speaker 1: 28:02

Well, I think that what we ought to do just for fun, is create an app where people can plug in their arguments, maybe the ones they're having at home, and they'll just spit it out and say, yep, you were right. I mean because that's all we want. We want to know if we're right or wrong. Who don't certainly could save marriages or end them. It would at least be fun. But then I do think it's just as much simpler use of it. But I'm finding Google BARD to be a pretty good alternative to just running a Google search. It spits out a narrative, it's actually pretty well written and you can also find out what sources it relied on. So you're not just wildly, but then just I'll use it internally to inform myself and then check it. So I think that's a much simpler thing, but I would think that would have to be the case going forward. Should it be used where you have, like you said, the human with a soul who actually looks at it and says, OK, this is right or this is not right?

Speaker 2: 28:58

Or even just drafting that first draft of a settlement term sheet or an arbitration decision, especially if it's reasoned. Those are all things where the human touch has already been applied. You, as an arbitrator, have already made the decision. Now you're simply just giving the inputs to something, to the technology, to give you at least a longer form written version of this. Of course, you still have to prompt it correctly, provide the right information, but it's a powerful tool.

Speaker 2: 29:29

I actually learned that. So I wrote a. I'm not a doctor. I wrote a medical school recommendation for one of our externs and I used it to help me. I had a whole outline, gave it the whole outline of what I wanted to say, but then give me now, put the meat to the outline, and it was fantastic. I still had to make a number of edits and tweak the actual recommendation, but just simply that process of the Gen AI, putting the initial meat on the outline, saved me probably at least two or three hours of time. And so these are things that I think when I say iteratively, these are things that I think folks can start to use this technology for.

Speaker 1: 30:17

So then, I wanted to go through a number of hot topics that have been literally in headlines, that people would know about and maybe you could just give me your take on them. The Dominion Voting Fox Settlement that was mediated in the final days before trial by a mediator on vacation in Europe. So what can litigants and ADR professionals learn from that case?

Speaker 2: 30:43

I think that's actually a really good example of the efficacy and potentially the impact of ADR right that if you have the right mediator who has the right temperaments not just the right background, but I think the temperaments important too you can get some of these cases to resolution, as big as they may be. Yeah, I think it's a testament to the efficacy of ADR. I think perhaps doing it sooner would have been better than waiting until just before trial and the fact that it can be done virtually, and that's actually a big deal. I think folks a lot of times much less now than pre-pandemic, but there's some folks who still believe that, hey, I need to be in person because X, y or Z reasons. But this is a $700 million case that was, like you said, mediated remotely from someone on vacation on a boat I don't know if you did it from the boat, but clearly remotely and so I think it's also a good use case just to show that, hey, if this case can be mediated remotely, certainly other cases can be too.

Speaker 1: 32:02

You co-wrote an article on the US Supreme Court case Coinbase versus Bilski. As you described it to me, there was some discussion between justices over maybe gamesmanship or whatever that's played in litigation. What was the article about? Oh, it was the upshot.

Speaker 2: 32:18

Yeah, so this was an article back in August that I wrote with a litigator and a friend of mine around the interesting dynamics in the majority opinion and the dissent. So, of course, bilski, sure folks are aware that the Supreme Court essentially ruled that if there is an arbitration decision on appeal that the district courts now have to stay all pre-trial and trial proceedings. The thing we found interesting and that we wrote about was the discussion between Justice Kavanaugh on the majority side and then Justice Jackson and of course the other justices too, around their rationale for why proceedings should be stayed or shouldn't be stayed. And what was really interesting was that it all came down to gamesmanship. That was interesting because it was kind of literally why we started New Era was how do we eliminate the gamesmanship from litigation and just get parties to the point so that people aren't just playing games just to create pain or create other forms of leverage. Just get to the point, discuss what it's about, get it resolved.

Speaker 2: 33:37

And so you had Justice Kavanaugh talking about some of the tactics that plaintiffs counsel and plaintiffs attorneys would play and deploy. But then Justice Jackson rightfully also pointed out a lot of the tactics that corporations might engage in that also are gamesmanship and that drag out a case and drag out and kind of just make everything more expensive, and it was just a really, really interesting discussion among the justices that this whole decision really came down to. Well, if we decide this way, then the other side could potentially play a lot of games. But if we decide this way, then the other side can play a lot of games. And it's really telling that even the justices are pointing out just the gamesmanship that's inherent in our kind of existing justice system. Yeah, I got you.

Speaker 1: 34:34

Well, look, you're doing some interesting work and you're trying to solve a problem also. That's pretty meaningful, so let's stay in touch. And, rich Lee, thank you very much for talking with me about this today.

Speaker 2: 34:44

Thank you, tom, thanks for having me, thanks for having me.