Sul Lee Law Firm released English and Korean analysis of HKA construction dispute data on 29 October 2026, focusing on change order management.
DALLAS, Texas, 29 October 2026. Sul Lee Law Firm, PLLC published bilingual analysis of construction dispute data, released simultaneously in English and Korean. The analysis examines why construction disputes recur on American projects and argues that change order management, rather than the underlying contract, is where most of them begin.
Sul Lee Law Firm, PLLC is a business and intellectual property law firm based in Dallas, Texas, United States, operating at sulleelaw.com. The firm advises company owners, executives and shareholders, and practices in both English and Korean. It was recognized in 2026 as a Fast 100 Asian American Business, an award presented in connection with the CelebrAsian Business and Procurement Conference.
What the data shows
The analysis draws on the 2025 CRUX Insight Report published by HKA, a global construction dispute consulting firm. That report examined claims and disputes across 2,204 construction projects in 114 countries and identified the leading causes of construction disputes by region. In the Americas, including North America, the three leading causes were changes in scope, workmanship deficiencies and design errors.
HKA’s figures also show that changes in scope are not a recent development. They have ranked among the leading causes of construction disputes consistently since before 2020, which the firm’s analysis treats as evidence that the problem is structural to how construction work is contracted rather than a feature of any particular market cycle.
Why construction disputes keep recurring
The analysis describes a pattern familiar to American contractors. A project owner requests additional work. The contractor proceeds, to avoid delaying the schedule, on the understanding that costs will be settled later. When payment is requested, the owner argues the work fell inside the original contract, or declines to pay because no formal change order was ever approved.
Construction also carries risk that most industries do not. Change orders alter scope after the price is agreed. Retainage withholds payment until long after the work is finished. Subcontractors are paid on schedules that do not match the main contract. The firm’s position is that disputes cluster around the documentation of changes rather than the original agreement, which is why a partnership that performs well on one project can fail on the third. Analysis of the systems a contractor needs before hiring and partnering reaches a similar conclusion about written agreements preceding growth.
The analysis argues the objective is not to eliminate changes, which site conditions and design revisions make largely unavoidable, but to manage their effect on cost, schedule and responsibility before the work proceeds.
What triggers a business divorce in Texas
Most partnership breakdowns trace to an agreement that was never written down, or one written for a company that no longer exists. Ownership splits, decision rights and exit terms agreed verbally at the outset tend to fail at the exact moment they are needed. Exit terms, in the firm’s reading, matter as much as formation terms, and are the clause most often left for later.
What an owner can do when a partner takes company money
A partner who takes company funds without authority may be in breach of fiduciary duty, which is a separate claim from breach of contract. Preserving records and obtaining an independent view of the books generally precedes any confrontation, because a partner who learns an audit is coming can act quickly. Texas company owners weighing these claims commonly begin with a Dallas TX corporate law attorney rather than a litigator.
What happens to intellectual property when a partner leaves
Designs, brand names and written material created inside a partnership rarely have clear ownership recorded, and the question surfaces only when somebody leaves. Consumer and fashion brands encounter this most often, where a design can be the single asset worth arguing over. A review of how copyright protects unique designs sets out what is protectable and what is not.
Bilingual practice and the Korean business community
The firm publishes in Korean as well as English, which places it among a small number of United States business law practices producing substantive legal analysis in both languages. Korean owned companies operating in Texas face the ordinary difficulties of American commercial law alongside the additional problem of working through translation at the moment a dispute is most costly. The firm’s founder has described building the practice around that gap.
Practical detail
The construction dispute analysis was written by Sul Lee, Principal Attorney at the firm, and published on 29 October 2026 in English and Korean at sulleelaw.com.
Sul Lee Law Firm, PLLC works with business owners across the Dallas and Fort Worth area, including Plano, Frisco, Irving, Carrollton, Richardson and Coppell, and with companies in Houston, Austin and San Antonio. Practice areas include business litigation, partnership and shareholder disputes, intellectual property and trademark litigation, non-compete and employment defense, commercial real estate and general business counsel.