Fees and terms

How we’re paid

Somebody has to pay for this work, and every payer has an interest. Pretending otherwise would be the first broken promise. So here is exactly how it works.

Isometric illustration of a signed contract with a pen and a stamp

The rule that matters

Neutrality is not about who writes the check. It is about what the fee depends on.

This is settled practice in the mediation profession. Mediators are routinely paid by one side. Arbitrators are paid by the parties in dispute. Independent monitors are paid by the defendant and report to the court. In land use, applicant-funded third-party review — where the developer pays and the locality selects and instructs the reviewer — is ordinary practice.

What the profession’s Model Standards of Conduct prohibit is a fee contingent on the result. No success fees. No percentage of a benefits package. No bonus for reaching agreement, and no discount for a denial. We are paid for doing the hard work, at the same rate, whatever we find.

How engagements are structured

Applicant-funded, community-selected
The developer funds an escrow; the local government selects us, instructs us, and receives our work. The party with the money pays; the party with standing controls. Neither controls the finding. This is our preferred structure and it is already the standard mechanism for third-party traffic and acoustic review for data centers and other large infrastructure projects.
Cost-shared across jurisdictions
Where several towns and a county are affected, each contributes. Nobody is the sole payer, and people who contribute tend to show up — which makes the coalition real rather than nominal.
Both parties contribute, in a published ratio
Often the developer covers most of it and the community a smaller, published share. The community’s contribution is partly symbolic and does real work: it makes them a client rather than a subject, and gives them standing to fire us.

The terms, published before we start

Fixed fee or hourly. Never contingent on any outcome, in any form.
Funded in advance into escrow, so no party can defund us mid-process as leverage.
Term-limited, and not renewable while the dispute is live, so we are never angling for the next contract.
No downstream work for any party. No implementation contract, no communications retainer, no advisory role after the process closes.
A published concentration limit, so no single client becomes structurally decisive to the firm.
A published record of engagements we have declined, and why.

What we will not do, for anyone

Write advocacy materials for either side.
Take an engagement whose conclusion is predetermined, without saying so publicly.
Represent a project as having community support that it does not have.
Accept a role that is meant to produce a record rather than a process.
Sign a confidentiality agreement covering information that bears on community impacts — water, power, noise, emissions, traffic, or fiscal terms — or any agreement requiring the destruction of records or officials’ own notes.

Aerial view of transmission pylons crossing green and gold farmland at low sun

Start a conversation

Tell us where the project is, who is involved, and what stage it has reached. A short conversation is usually enough to work out whether this is the kind of thing we do.

Get in touch