Helping People Find Solutions to Problems and Avoid Litigation.

The King County Court Clerk reports that less than 2% of all cases go to trial. So 98% of all cases settle! But most lawyers train for nothing but the aggressive adversarial, litigation aimed approach to problem solving. But since most cases settle, a good lawyer should be able to ‘switch’ into a negotiation and settlement ‘mode’. Unfortunately, this is often not the case, and lawyers often spend way too much of their clients money, fighting it out over every little thing in anticipation of their case going to trial. But they almost never go to trial…

            There is a better way. Mediation. Mediation offers clients the ability to meet, listen to each other, and to find a solution to their problems with the help of a trained Mediator. I’m a trained mediator and skilled negotiator, having worked on a variety of cases in a court supervised mediation program. I can help parties with legal or personal issues, solve those problems outside of the legal system, where they can avoid many of the costs and stresses caused by litigation.

            As a lawyer, mediation training has given me superior negotiation skills to assist my clients in settlement negotiations. I also have advanced ways of determining the probability of a case failing or prevailing before trial, and the fair value of the case at each step along the process. In mediation with opposing parties I can employ these skills to help all the parties find a fair settlement that ends the problem and allows them to go on with their lives. And when acting as a lawyer for my client in negotiation sessions, I can use these advanced skills to help my clients achieve their goals and get a fair settlement.

            Most lawyers have not had any, or very little, formal mediation training. Often lawyers will turn to becoming Mediators after they have burned out on the practice of law, thinking that mediation is easy. They think that just because they have settled cases, or worked in a big firm’s litigation department, that they are skilled to mediate cases. This is NOT true.

Successful mediation requires mediation specific skills. It is not something that one can just ‘pick up’ on the job; unfortunately that is exactly what far too many ‘mediators’ do. And successful case evaluation requires more than just saying that the chance of winning a motion, or winning at trial are ‘good’, or ‘okay’. Because what does that mean? A trained mediator can actually break down into math what ‘good’ and ‘okay’ mean, so the client, who didn’t go to law school, can evaluate their case and make an informed decision. 

            I use my mediation skills to help my clients in everything I do. It makes me better able to identify my client’s issues and motivations, and helps me in dealing with opposing parties, and helps me when I am acting as a mediator for parties in a dispute.

            If you have a dispute that you would like a skilled mediator to assist you with, call or email me for a free conversation about how I might be able to help you solve the problem and avoid a long expensive legal conflict.