Oh my gosh have I fought about who is going to mediate my cases back when I practiced. Now that I have been mediating full time for several years many of those fights were needless. Yes, there were some mediators that I would not agree to because they were just biased and simply did not mediate. They were just a mouth for the other side. But quite frankly, their reputation was well known even by the attorneys who wanted to use them and we were usually able to move quickly to another mediator. But my failure to trust the other side picking someone after that led to prolonged skirmishes about the mediator. A waste of time. Good negotiators come prepared for mediation and in a mindset of creating settlement opportunities. That does not mean you do not put your best case forward but it does mean you don’t spend your day wanting to be “right” or litigating everything. It is not about vindication. It is about finding a settlement that meets your needs.

In this article, Richard Shore, shares “four counterintuitive strategies that harness the strengths of mediation rather than treating it as litigation light. They may not be traditional, but properly employed, they work.”