A Musing on Mediation

Ahhh, hot coffee.What a sweet, nutty love affair have had we most with its heady, evening-or-sands-hued mirror-in-steam. Delicious, diverse, and e’er enigmatic, it is the liberator of hangovers, the comprehensive catalyst for 180-degree attitudinal shifts and brand-new-day Einsteinian ideas, the rejuvenator of every yawning time, the second and savory (or only) sun in the morn’s break of fast, and the ultimate rising moon eclipsing the perfect dinner meal. Whether a well-good-n’-cheap, clean brew or a six-bucks-with-the-trimmings and attendant, guilty-pleasure, complex-contemporary ambience; whether structured from beans from the lush of Costa Rica or the heart of Kenyaa quality joe’s a joe’s a joe, and if you weren’t quite certain before, let ye now decidedly know.

Mediation is curiously like a cup of coffeeveritably, its quality is neither directly correlated to cost or form, nor origin.Simply put, one can experience an expert mediation session at an in-town, no-frills, $20-$40-a-session county mediation office; at the posh, leathery digs of a cross-town, full-service mediation firm, at hundreds-to-thousands-for-a-session typically coming complete with catered hors d’oevres and a lavish lunch from the local three-star; or–in this greener, gas-conserving timebasically borderlessly online, from the comfort of your fave pair of pjamas and tripped-out EZ-boy/girl chair, at varying rates. Since, divergent from brew, the average person or business does not typically pop about sampling mediations, discerning a mediation entity’s prospective quality boils down to good-old-fashioned research.

Find out about the qualifications of the prospective assigned mediator(s), the entity’s overall settlement success rateand, if you/your attorney determine that you require specialization in the cause of action to be mediated, inquire about the average number of cases handled by the mediator(s) in said specialty–whilst keeping your optimal form of process (e.g., face-to-face or online) and cost in view. Research will not guarantee that you will receive your ultimate way in the session, but it might reduce that this-was-a-truly-funky-cup feeling at its conclusion.

Fey Ugokwe, J.D., is the Founder/Editor-in-Chief of ADRPAGES.COM
Article first written for, and published on, her conflict resolution e-zine ADRPAGES.COM which is a pioneering, free E-Zine that provides Alternative Dispute Resolution news/information to the public.