SERVICES
Informed Insights provides the following wide range of services to its clients.
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Crisis Management
When he practiced law, a principal focus of Lee Terry’s practice was crisis management. In these “bet the company” situations, Lee would advise one or more of the CEO, the CFO, the Board of Directors, the Audit Committee, individual directors, or other participants. Unfortunately, as an attorney subject to strict conflict of interest rules, Lee could seldom advise all of the company’s interested parties at the same time because some or all of them had potentially conflicting legal interests precluding joint representation. As a result, there was usually a host of lawyers involved, which only worsened the company’s business challenges when each lawyer gave their client legal advice that served the individual’s interests instead of the company’s. Too often, that advice was something like, “Don’t do anything that might get you sued.”
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The self-interest generated by this gaggle of legal advice was counterproductive, sowing dissonance among management and the Board, as individuals put their personal interests ahead of the company’s. Only the rare CEO could keep his team focused on the company’s business while lawyers and legal liabilities swirled around them. Too often the entire management team, irrespective of blameworthiness, would be expelled and the company significantly injured.
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Engaging an experienced crisis management adviser like I² for the entire company could mitigate or avoid this potential disaster. A business adviser who is not constrained to serve only one of the many involved parties and who understands the diverging incentives of the different players can help the entire management team navigate a complex business crisis.
Professional Services Management
When a client engages an attorney, auditor, investment banker or insurance provider, the client typically receives a lengthy engagement letter from the professional adviser that is full of legal jargon and complicated financial terms. And the engagement letter is only the beginning of what is often a lopsided relationship between a company and its outside professional adviser. In too many cases the client must blindly accept the pronouncements of the adviser without fully appreciating the alternatives, or even whether there are any.
Informed Insights helps its clients level the playing field so that they can better manage these highly specialized and expensive professional advisers. Informed Insights can provide its advice to the client behind the scenes, or it can actively participate in communications with an adviser as a client liaison to ensure that all the appropriate questions are asked and answered.
Proactive Business Mediation
Mediation between parties with conflicting interests can happen at different times. It can happen on the eve of trial or long before the parties are even considering a lawsuit or arbitration. Sometimes mediation is required by a specific mediation clause in an agreement between the parties as a prerequisite to filing an arbitration or lawsuit. On rare occasions, conflicting parties select mediation as a joint effort to formulate a creative and mutually acceptable solution before the situation becomes adversarial.
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“Proactive Business Mediation” offered by I² is seldom needed by parties arguing about the amount of money payable by one to the other. Proactive mediation is appropriate when the parties are looking for an experienced, skilled problem solver to help them formulate a “win- win” solution to an existing or impending conflict. Proactive mediation might include consideration of long-term solutions for the parties’ future coexistence, for operating independently but cooperatively, for sharing the benefits of a disputed resource, or other “outside the box” ideas. While there are no guarantees, I²’s proactive mediation is meant to offer a bona fide opportunity to prevent a nascent conflict from ripening into the costs, delays and distractions of litigation or arbitration.
Business Consulting
Informed Insights provides “whole business consulting” focusing on the company’s interests but also considering those of the other affected parties, including customers, suppliers, executives, and other stakeholders. Achieving “win-win” solutions for the company and the other stakeholders is usually a high priority for I²’s consulting advice. Informed Insights will always refuse to be a weapon wielded by one company faction against another; rather, I² will seek positive, thoughtful solutions and will counsel against divisive measures.
Expert Services
Informed Insights offers expert services to its business advisory clients and their attorneys seeking to unravel complex or intricate business arrangements of other parties. Expert services can include detailed written reports explaining complicated agreements or arrangements and, if required, expert witness testimony from Lee Terry. In many cases, the greatest value provided by I² are "plain English" translations of complicated agreements, arrangements or other agreements for the benefit of the client, the client’s legal counsel, or even the court.