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Counterintuitive Strategies for Success in Mediation

By Richard Shore
October 24, 2012

If your company or organization finds itself engaged in litigation, chances are that the dispute will be resolved in a conference room rather than a courtroom. Most lawsuits settle before judgment, and in-house counsel increasingly are turning to mediation ' negotiation assisted by a third-party facilitator ' to resolve their clients' disputes. They hope mediation will be faster and cheaper than litigation and yield a better result.

But the potential benefits of mediation often are undermined because the participants enter the process with the very litigation-oriented, adversarial mind-set they meant to leave behind. They focus on winning the argument rather than getting to yes. They try to game the system, glare across the table, argue about who is right, and just generally pour time and resources into activities that undermine the goal of settlement.

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