We all have heard of the stories where parties have litigated a matter for 4-6 years and have paid lawyers, experts and others up to 1-2 million dollars to litigate and have their matter go through a trial.

Studies show almost 90% of mediations reach resolution in a timely and cost effective way.

There was a recent commercial dispute regarding money owed which was litigated for over 5 years in the courts. I had mediated the matter early on.  At mediation, the party that was owed the money had agreed to take a significant reduction in the sum initially requested. The other party refused and responded with a final offer that was 40% less than what the first party had requested. The party insisted that they would not pay anything near what the owed party had requested. The matter ended up going to trial and the party that owed money lost and ended up not only paying his lawyers more than what was initially requested, but ended up paying the other party almost twice as much.

If they had resolved the matter at mediation, both parties would have saved hundreds of thousands of dollars and 4-5 years of time, stress, frustration, anger and effort to litigate and try the matter.

During the mediation, I asked the party who owed the money what the worst case scenario would be if the matter proceeded to trial. Unfortunately, the party did not agree to resolve the matter and the worst case scenario occurred.