The firm's Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) practice is dedicated to the use of established and emerging settlement techniques for resolving its clients' disputes while avoiding the financial and emotional costs of protracted litigations.

Wherever feasible, McLaughlin & Stern seeks to keep its clients out of court or to help extricate them from litigations in which they may have become bogged down. Its now expanding ADR practice works with clients and their counsel to select an ADR technique appropriate to the dispute and most likely to succeed in resolving it. These include not only the old standbys of mediation and arbitration, but also newly recognized and/or increasingly popular processes and techniques such as Collaborative Law, Settlement Counsel, Cooperative Negotiation Agreements, Med-Arb and Early Neutral Evaluation.

The ADR practice is geared to serve both individual and corporate clients. Its methods have already gained special recognition and praise from in-house counsel whose priorities include the containment of litigation costs, and divorcing couples who wish to part amicably and bypass the pain and cost of adversary court proceedings. Functioning in various capacities relative to these ADR processes (including acting as neutrals or advocates in them and/or facilitating arrangements for them) our lawyers work closely with the firm's other practice areas, including litigation, family law, trust and estates, entertainment, corporate and real estate.