There are various grounds that can lead to business disputes in Louisiana. Business may disagree about the terms of contracts and prior arrangements. Billing issues, property matters and other grounds can also give rise to disputes between businesses.

What to Do in a Business Dispute?

The first step when involved in a business dispute in Covington, Louisiana should be to review any documents relevant to the matter, such as contracts. It may have already been decided in these documents how disputes will be handled. If there are no dispute resolution clauses in the contracts, or there are no attending documents at all, the parties may always resort to the courts to resolve the dispute. Where the parties have not agreed beforehand about how to handle disputes, legal principles have been designed to determine the resolution. When they are called upon, Louisiana courts try to discover the best resolution by looking to the facts of the particular situation presented. Each state has different business laws about dispute resolution and contract law. An Attorney practicing in Covington can help you handle your dispute in accordance with the applicable Louisiana laws. With an attorney's knowledge of the law, the parties of a dispute may be able to avoid going to court entirely, since negotiations often proceed more smoothly with representation.

Alternative Dispute Resolution

Disputes in contracts must often be resolved outside of court according to a dispute resolution clause. Methods of resolving a conflict outside of court are called Alternative Dispute Resolution or ADR. These methods include Mediation, Arbitration and Collaboration. All forms of ADR are designed to reach the same decision a court would have, without needing to actually go to court. They carry their own sets of procedures and protocols, and they often involve a neutral third party listening to both sides of a dispute and making a determination based on local law. An attorney familiar with ADR in Covington can counsel you through the process if your business dispute is to be resolved by ADR.