Who We Are
About the site: TryToSettle.com® are here to serve you.
Nancy Richards-Stower developed this site so that the parties in a dispute, via "blind bids," can inexpensively (and easily) test their settlement numbers early (and as often as they like) possibly settling right away, but without sharing their numbers, or "bottom lines" with the other side should their numbers not overlap. This preserves their power to change valuations in the future, without exhibiting real, or perceived, weaknesses in their resolve.
Communication is fostered on our site because the parties (or counsel) must communicate to set up the time and date for the bid session and agree to participate in "real time." We impose strict time limits. These factors focus the parties on resolution. It's easy.
About the Founder:
Nancy owns and operates a respected employment law firm in New Hampshire (see www.jobsandjustice.com) and was inducted into the prestigious College of Labor and Employment Lawyers in 2003. She is a former member and chair of the New Hampshire Commission for Human Rights (1979 -1985). During that same time, she was an associate, then partner, of her mentor and law school dean, Dr. Robert H. Rines, founder of Franklin Pierce Law Center (now University of New Hampshire School of Law). Dr. Rines' inspiration for the renowned law school was to assist technology-based businesses resolve legal disputes before their technology became obsolete. He had little patience with the waste of time and resources litigation devoured by the typical patent and anti-trust litigation in which he excelled, but bemoaned. Thus, the ADR bug was planted early (and firmly) in Nancy's career.
Nancy's court-based ADR training began in 1991, with the first mediation training program instituted by the New Hampshire superior court system for its first crop of volunteer mediators. It was a mandatory program for all litigants; however, the schedule was often court-mandated. She found that often parties did not want "premature" negotiations for fear of leaving an unsuccessful mediation with the last numbers hanging in the air as trial approached and long after "the last numbers" lost their justification.
So, for those litigants who arrived for ADR because of an arbitrary court assignment calendar, Nancy developed a "blind bid" settlement formula by which confidential offers were provided to her by each side and a pre-agreed mathematical formula rendered a case settled or not, but the bid numbers remained "secret" from the other party, so if a mediation failed, the parties' "last numbers" didn't track the parties to trial.
Nancy envisioned an inexpensive internet-based, party-driven system to do the same thing that she had done in those court sponsored mediations. Finally, in 2014, with licenses in hand, and computer coding in place, she launched this site.