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The Five Reasons Why Your Client Will Thank You For Suggesting Mediation!

By Christopher Annunziata

This is now up on my redesigned and updated website.  Please drop in and let me know what you think of the redesign (if you didn’t see the old design, no worries).

The Five Reasons Why Your Client Will Thank You For Suggesting Mediation!

1. Your Clients Understand Plain Talk.

While it seems familiar to us lawyers, the legal process is daunting and unfamiliar to most clients. Interrogatories, depositions, and motions practice are all foreign concepts to them. But everyone understands plain talk. Mediation allows the parties to freely discuss their interests in a more relaxed, non-confrontational setting. When your clients mediate, they will understand the result and how they got there.

2. Your Clients Will Feel Involved.

Until now, you?ve called most of the shots. You?ve asked your client to answer interrogatories and provide documents. Helped them prepare for deposition. Suggested strategies and courses of action. During mediation, your clients will get involved. They will tell their story. Be asked their opinion. Present ideas. When your clients mediate, they will feel involved.

3. Your Clients Will Appreciate the Cost Savings.

Face it. It?s the 800 pound gorilla in the room. Somewhere near the front of your client?s mind is the thought that litigation is costing them significant direct and indirect costs. One study by the Justice Department showed that U.S. Attorneys who mediated their cases saved 89 hours in attorney and paralegal time and over $10,000 in costs compared to taking the matter to trial. When your clients mediate, they will appreciate the fact that you have actually saved them money.

4. Your Clients Will See the Value in Your Services.

You work hard preparing a case. But most of what you do takes place in a ?black box? into which the client never peeks. Mediation allows you the opportunity to open up the black box and demonstrate the value of all that hard work. By preparing as if for a hearing or trial, organizing documents and exhibits to exchange, preparing an opening statement and drafting a list of talking points, you demonstrate to your clients what it is you do for them. When your clients mediate, they will see the value in your services.

5. Mediation works.

Finally, mediation works. I don?t quote my success rate to potential clients because I believe that my success (and yours) should be measured not by the quantity of cases that settle, but by the quality of the effort exerted in helping you reach resolution. The empirical data does show, however, that mediated cases settle at high rates. Simply Google ?mediation success rates.? When your clients mediate, you are giving them the best opportunity to reach a resolution.

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Full post as published by CKA Mediation and Arbitration Services Blog on February 26, 2008 (boomark / email).