We’ve Got Answers: Your Questions About Mediation Part Seven

Q:  What are the advantages of going to mediation?

A:  There are various reasons why it is advantageous for parties who are embroiled in a legal dispute or already find themselves in litigation to take advantage of mediation.

While, as I’ve pointed out in past articles, a mediator will make no decisions concerning the legal dispute at issue in mediation, the mediation conference nonetheless gives the parties an opportunity to run their arguments by a neutral third party. Any reactions from the mediator or questions asked by the mediator can provide valuable insight as to how a judge or jury may view their arguments.

Also, since, in the course of the mediation, the parties present some or all of their respective arguments and the material factual issues are typically fleshed out at length and in detail, the mediation conference can afford the parties the opportunity to better understand each other’s arguments and evidence. In this way, the mediation conference can serve as a form of discovery for the parties.

Mediation also provides the parties with a safe forum in which to openly discuss settlement, since everything said in mediation is confidential and cannot be used in the trial of the case. This allows the parties to speak relatively freely, which is more likely to result in a resolution.

Of course, settlement is the whole point of mediation, since, among other reasons, settling a case at mediation is far less expensive than taking the case to trial.

Another advantage of a mediated settlement over a court judgment (even for the prevailing party), is that in mediation the parties decide the terms of the settlement and have various options available to them which are not available to the court. For example, where court judgments can typically provide only “up and down” judgments naming a winner and a loser, the parties, in a mediated settlement, can employ whatever compromises they may agree to.

Gary Schaaf has been a Florida Supreme Court Certified Circuit Court Mediator since 1995. He can be reached for scheduling at gschaaf@beckerlawyers.com or by phone at (813) 527-3912, and you can read more about his background here.