Speaker 1: So, I'm frequently asked whether and how my business dispute can be settled outside the court. The answer to that is 100% of course, 100% of course. And so, you know, obviously the first way that you want to go about that is attempting to confront, right, and be direct with your business partner, your employee, an outside vendor, someone who you have a contract with, to try to produce the result that you want, and that's considered negotiation. If, for example, for whatever reason, you can't negotiate, you can't have a discussion with the other side that's not going to be productive, there's other mechanisms besides going to court to get you a resolution. One of those processes is something called mediation. And so, you've probably heard that term and thought about like court and thought about all these things. But the reality is what mediation is, especially if it's non-binding, is an opportunity for you to use a third party referee to help to bridge the gap between the dispute. These referees, which can be found on the internet, you can look up ADR, which is Alternative Dispute Resolution, and type in mediators. You could find people that are close to you. These referees do a really great job of trying to bring the parties together to see the result that they can ultimately get to and avoid the costs of unnecessary litigation. And so, you could use a mediator. It's non-binding. It's confidential. And in fact, under the court rules, there's certain prohibitions from using any information from a mediation, something called a mediation privilege, in litigation. So, you have freedom to be as open as you want, say whatever you want, as long as you're not committing crimes, or acting unethically, or immorally, or something improperly. But if you're doing everything correctly, anything that you say in mediation is protected from court. And it's a really great process to get an external mediator to help you try to bridge the gap between your dispute. If mediation's not enough, and you need something more, but you want confidential, you want quick, you want inexpensive, one process is arbitration. I tend to avoid it. I don't particularly like arbitration, but a lot of people swear by it. And what an arbitrator does is they will render an opinion, just like a jury or just like a judge will, and that decision has finality as far as the law is concerned. Once that arbitrator renders the decision, which is supposed to be relatively quickly compared to what court is, that's hit or miss, that may or may not happen. But an arbitrator is one person, they're hired, they're a referee, they're going to call balls and strikes, they're going to tell you what is, and then that decision can then ultimately become something called an award, and then an award can be turned into a judgment, and then it's enforceable as if a judge or a jury rendered the opinion. So those three things are all external sources for you to resolve your dispute outside of court, and of course you always have the legal system, the justice system, to file a complaint or pursue legal recourse if you have to. So you have negotiations, mediation, and arbitration to try to get resolutions outside of court. If you have any further questions, my name is Michael Smyken from Caligula. I'm here to answer anything that I can for you. Contact us directly. We'll provide more information about this question and any others that you may have.