The cowboy culture was long ago replaced with a legal system that wants to resolve all conflicts through an elaborate process within the Courts. Try as you might, you will inevitably find yourself the subject of a lawsuit, either as defendant or plaintiff. The process server will someday appear like a Grim Reaper on Halloween night.

Now, whether it is civil or criminal, the first thing you will likely do is hire an attorney to respond to the outrageous charges or to prosecute redemption on your behalf, if you feel the victim. In the case of small claims, normally under $15, 000 or often $5, 000 you can respond yourself pro se. Books from a company called Nolo Contendre will advise you on the process. But, let's say you head downtown to find yourself an attorney. If you are the defendant, he will likely want $5,000 upfront out of which to draw upon. If it is a criminal case, he will want money and probably the keys to your house and titles to your cars. In either case the attorney will advise you to say nothing and go through him on all matters big and small.

Now, at first blush this is a relief. You can take comfort that you have a professional on the job working on your behalf dealing with this distasteful matter going on in the background of your life. In the foreground, hopefully you believe you can continue to function at your job and with the family. But, beware, this is the first tarpit you are about to fall into and you will soon find yourself mired like the proverbial Woolly Mammoth. And, remember what happened to the Woolly Mammoths and Sabre Toothed Tigers. They dug them up 10,000 years later with fresh flowers in their mouth.

The fundamental problem here is two-fold. First, the opposition will also hire an attorney and he will advise his client to do the same thing. So now you have two attorneys billing out at $250 an hour with communications only flowing through the attorney's. It is a deluxe triangulation that reduces you to an object in someone else's process. By allowing an "attorney-to-attorney communication to dominate you will find you have little influence or control over the matter.

All lawsuits have a rational component and an emotional component. The rational side is the damages that were inflicted on the party and the amends that should be made. But, on the emotional side, it is pride, anger, fear and a host of feelings that provide the fuel to keep most lawsuits alive. While you will need an attorney to respond to the complaint and handle motions with the court, in the end, most lawsuits get settled on the courthouse steps and rarely go to trial. And, criminal matters are by-and-large plea bargained. Why is that? Because trials are risky for both sides. Sure you can win big, but you can also lose big. Handing your life, lock, stock and barrel, over to an attorney is like riding on the back of a motorcycle without a helmet going 100 miles an hour; I can assure you a trial is the equivalent of an 18-wheeler suddenly materializing out of the fog. In war, it's called the " fog of uncertainty". When someone declares war they feel justified, and they want vindication and think there is some chance of winning. But, as the real battle begins to take shape, a " fog of uncertainty" sets in because there are too many variables that could not have been predicted or controlled. Success is never guaranteed. Ask Napoleon, Rommel, or Lee.

Litigation is the equivalent of a declared war. With it comes all of the uncertainties of war and in the end, both sides are normally left devastated. One side may have to make reparations, but make no mistake about it, both sides pay a price emotionally and financially. In the end, I believe both the plaintiff and the defendant need to have a covert strategy whereby they will personally, if at all possible, negotiation face-to-face without the attorneys and try to reach a settlement. If you allow your pride, anger, resentment and grievances to prevail, you can plan on spending large amounts on attorneys and, at best, winning a hollow victory.

So, let's say you decide to play both offense and defense. You hire an attorney to handle things inside the courtroom, like responses, motions, etc. But, you reserve the negotiations to yourself and wait until the situation is ripe to try and resolve the matter with the opposing party face-to-face. How do you get the other person in the frame of mind to do so? All of us have pressure points and fulcrums that come with levers. Maybe it is the possibilty of losing or some other reason to get the person to sit down and talk. At the outset negotiations are unlikely because the emotions run too high, but as the case progresses most people cannot maintain a high level of adrenaline flow and will at some point be more receptive to talking. When that time comes, that is when you have to make your move and try to get things settled.

Sometimes negotiations can be facilitated by third parties and other times by picking up the phone or jumping on an airplane. I am also not so naive as to recognize that there are also situations where people want their day in court so as to make a statement and they could care less about the result. From a rational point of view that is hard to overcome, but try you must.

In the end, you will have to be prepared to do four things. First, you must take ownership of the role you played in creating the situation. Second you must be prepared to make amends and that will likely involve money. Third, you must be prepared to forgive the transgressions of the other person, no matter what. And, there is a fourth, that, depending on your religious orientation, you might feel is hokey, but I sincerely believe is the singularly most important thing you can do.

After struggling with a situation as much as you can and doing everything within your personal power you must turn the problem over to your higher power, call him God, or whatever works for you (the Divine Matrix?) and ask that the right moral outcome take place. When you do this you must be prepared to accept that outcome and live with it.

In the end, it is not about who was right or wrong. Rarely are there situations where things are so clear cut. But, even in cases where one party is clearly to blame and the other is clearly a victim, achieving a peaceful settlement normally involves the victim being willing to transcend the situation. You see it all the time when the family of a murder victim chooses to forgive the perpetrator because that is the only way transcendence can be achieved.

In an ideal world, attorneys would be the lubricant to make such outcomes occur. In reality, there are far too many attorneys trying to make a living and there are more than enough victims and perpetrators to wallpaper the wailing walls around the World. But, and I cannot say this too strongly or often enough, if you choose to deliver yourself over to an attorney and be a passive participant, you will pay an immense price for the luxury of that indulgence. You must be prepared to reassert yourself sometime during the process and become the master of your own destiny-the captain of the ship. Yes, it is risky and it takes courage and energy. But, I guarantee you will come away feeling better about the situation.

I say all of this from direct personal experience and I have the scars on my back to prove it.