Getting a head start: More intake questions and tips for mediators
✍ Scribed by Marjorie Aaron
- Publisher
- Wiley (John Wiley & Sons)
- Year
- 2002
- Weight
- 356 KB
- Volume
- 20
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 1549-4373
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Getting a Head Start: More Intake Questions and Tips for Mediators
BY MARJORIE AARON
portunities for the neutral to initiate the steps necessary for a successful resolution. The article focused on a list of intake questions for the mediator to direct to the parties. The questions included:
Have you and your client been involved i n mediation before? How did it work? What i s the status of this dispute/case? How did the case get t o mediation? Are you s t i l l i n the process of selecting a The l i s t of questions continues below. mediator, or have you agreed? 0 . 0 What i s the nub of the dispute here? Is it the applicable law, or i s it different views of the facts (or both)?
Even where you have explained that you don't want to raise neutrality concerns of opposing counsel by learning case details in the initial call, it is helpful to know whether the dispute is a battle over facts, or law, or both. Or something entirely different.
If you and opposing counsel were negotiating, without any involvement by the clients, do you think you could settle it, without need for mediation?
It's so much more elegant than just asking if there's a client problem, and may prompt a richer response. This question asks the attorney to make an educated guess about how much of opposing counsel posture is real-as well as his or her own position-and how much is negotiation puffery or clients' demands. Particularly where the lawyers have worked through significant discovery or motions on the case, they will have an intuitive sense of their counterpart's approach, whether he or she acknowledged a weakness uncovered in depositions, and the nature of his or her interaction with the client.
The author is a law professor at the University of Cincinnati and a mediator i n private practice.