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Strategies & Market Trends : Three Amigos Stock Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sergio H who wrote (16156)	7/6/1999 12:49:00 AM
From: freelyhovering	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 29382

Sergio--You have been very busy on these threads this weekend and I have found something to smooth you out and take away all your cares and pains.<gg> I have started another new thread. It's quite a lot of fun to do so as you know as well as a responsibility, but with my daily dose of SAMe, I should have no trouble. Myron Subject 29280

To: Sergio H who wrote (16156)	7/6/1999 12:39:00 PM
From: RCJIII	Respond to of 29382

Amigos, check out NAMC, internet auction site for lawsuit settlement. Forbes just released this article on the company- Forget the gavel and click on the mouse By Tomáš Kellner EW YORK. 08:55 AM EDT—Powered with a $1 million piece of homemade computer code, National Arbitration and Mediation Corp.'s (nasdaq: NAMC) clickNsettle.com says it can crack lengthy lawsuits with just a few mouseclicks. "We looked at the online auction format and thought, 'How can we apply it to our business?'" says Roy Israel, president and chief executive, speaking from his company's headquarters in Great Neck, N.Y. "Why can't we just auction off a lawsuit?" The clickNsettle venture shows that there's still land to grab on the Internet. "They are ahead of the curve," says Michael Shirer of Forrester Research. "We haven't looked at that yet." And Israel is no humble prospector. He says that Americans spend $300 billion a year just on litigation fees, and he wants a chunk. He says that within one year the web site will handle 10,000 cases. At full capacity it can manage "several thousand" lawsuits per month. "What we offer is an alternative to the court system," he says. "Why spend all the effort and money? Why not settle in today." The chief executive may be on to something. For example, there were 256,000 new civil cases filed with U.S. district courts in 1998, but only about 6,000 made it before a judge, according to figures from the U.S. Courts Administrative Office. More than 202,000 cases were terminated during the one-year period ending Sept. 1998, and it took on average about 19 months for a case to be tried last year, the Administrative Office records show. Figures for the entire court system may well be much higher. It's safe to say the costs of an average suit run into the thousands of dollars. The maximum fee at Israel's web site is $275 per litigant. To initiate a case costs $25. If the case is negotiated, the defendant pays $50. If the case is settled for less than $10,000, each party pays $100. If the case is settled for more, the fee for the litigants is $200. The maximum expense if a case is unsuccessful is $75. "It really is like the first hour of legal time," said Israel. The company has introduced the system to its 3,000 commercial clients, such as Travelers Insurance, and says the response is "tremendous." The market likes it too. NAM's stock is up 100% since the web site's launch last Wednesday. It closed yesterday at $2.15. This is how the 24/7 Internet court works: One of the litigants, say the plaintiff, enters some basic information about the case to a secure file on the web site. The defendant will then receive an E-mail message and, if interested, will post three blind offers on the site. Afterward, clickNsettle will notify the plaintiff and invite him to negotiate. If one of the offers falls within the parameters of the plaintiff's demand, the case settles. Israel says that the program keeps litigants from playing hardball--a common strategy in brick-and-mortar courtrooms. "clickNsettle removes all the posturing," he says. "You can put in what you truly feel your case is worth without losing any negotiating leverage. If the case is not settled, the other side never sees it." Just to cover all bases, NAM hopes that those clients who didn't settle online will use its traditional litigation business. NAM, which owns 100% of clickNsettle, is probably the cheapest Internet stock on the block, with its $6 million market cap matching its projected 1999 revenues. But that may change. Just wait and sue. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------