About
Jason Elster is a commercial and intellectual-property litigator who understands how to accelerate disputes to resolution. Polaris Resolution is where parties come to get past impasse and move on.
The background
For two decades I represented clients in commercial disputes and intellectual-property and trademark matters. I took depositions, argued the motions, tried the cases, and negotiated the settlements that ended most of them. Enough of them to notice the pattern that now defines this practice.
The great majority of hard-fought disputes settle. Unfortunately, they settle late, after both sides have spent heavily to get to a number that could have been reached sooner. The advocate's job is to fight for the best version of that number. The neutral's job is to help both sides find it before the fight consumes the thing they were fighting over.
I moved from advocacy to mediation because I am able to see a winning compromise where others see a battlefield. The same instincts that made me effective across the table, reading a case for its real weaknesses and holding people to what they actually said, are the instincts that get a settlement done.
The approach
A mediation is not a place to admire the disagreement. My method is to state each side's best case fully and honestly, including the parts the other side would rather not hear, and then work from that shared, unflinching picture toward terms both can live with. Naming a party's strongest argument is not a concession. It is the only credible way to show them the limits of it.
I carry over two habits from the courtroom into mediations. The first is holding people to their own prior words, gently reminding a party what they said at the outset when the money was the only issue, so we can square it with where they've landed. The second is refusing to get dragged into the secondary and tertiary fights. Most disputes have one or two questions that actually decide them, buried under a dozen that feel urgent and settle nothing. Finding the real one early is most of the work.
Underneath all of it is a plain premise about people in conflict: they are almost never lying, and almost never the villain of their own account. Treating both parties as reasonable people who arrived honestly at incompatible stories, and a path to resolution usually emerges.
What the parties can count on
Bad news is delivered early and straight, then met with options. Nobody is told how to feel about their case; they are shown the facts and trusted to weigh them.
No side is represented and no lean is telegraphed. What is said in caucus stays there. The parties, not the mediator, decide the outcome.
A deal that unravels on the drive home helped no one. Terms are made concrete and durable while the room is still aligned.
A short, confidential conversation costs nothing and usually is enough to know whether mediation is right for you.
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