The mediation lawyer team at Kuhn Rogers are experienced courtroom advocates with decades of experience helping resolve disputes in clients’ favor at trial. As skilled litigators, we also recognize that it is often preferable to help parties to a dispute reach a settlement before incurring the expense of a trial. Accordingly, the firm offers evaluative and facilitative mediation services for parties to disputes across a wide range of practice areas, including business, environmental law, real estate, family law, and probate.
Evaluative Mediation
Evaluative mediation, as the name suggests, helps parties to evaluate the strength of their legal position. Having a realistic sense of the strengths and weaknesses of their case frequently motivates parties to negotiate a resolution rather than risk an unfavorable outcome at trial.
The mediator is a neutral party with extensive subject matter knowledge of the area of dispute who speaks privately with each party and their counsel during the mediation process. While the mediator is not a judge, he or she strives to give the parties an accurate assessment of how a court might rule in their dispute.
Facilitative Mediation
As in evaluative mediation, the mediator in a facilitative process is a neutral party. The primary function of facilitative mediation is to help the parties craft a resolution to their dispute. Rather than focusing on what outcome the law might require in the case, facilitative mediation seeks to help the parties identify their respective needs and arrive at a mutually acceptable resolution.
When the parties reach an agreement, the mediator will memorialize it in writing which the parties’ attorneys can use to create a consent order for signature by the parties and the judge in the case.
Benefits of Mediation
One of the primary benefits of mediation is to avoid the expense and uncertain outcome of litigation, but there are other benefits as well. Facilitative mediation in particular allows parties to come up with more creative resolutions than a court would likely order, and which are tailored to their particular needs. In most cases, parties can pursue a mediated resolution to a dispute before even filing a lawsuit, which can result in significant cost savings.
Parties tend to be more satisfied, and more compliant, with resolutions into which they had significant input. And when parties to a dispute need to continue working together, mediation can help preserve cordiality, which the adversarial nature of litigation frequently destroys.