Are We There Yet? Achieving Time-Efficient Mediation

You may have heard stories about a mediation scheduled for one day starting at 9 a.m. and not concluding until 11 p.m. or even later. Eventually, starting in the afternoon and increasing as the evening progresses, the parties start squirming like kids in the back seat of the car on a cross-country family vacation. “Are we there yet?” they start wondering. “Why is this taking so long?”

It’s not unusual for a mediation to go longer than initially scheduled. In fact, many successful mediations take longer than originally anticipated. Why? First, it takes time for the mediator to develop rapport and trust with the parties and understand their issues and respective positions, all of which has to be accomplished before the mediator even begins to discuss negotiations or convey settlement offers. In cases involving complex facts and issues, it can take several hours for each party to tell their story to the mediator, another crucial component of a successful mediation. Then there’s the time necessary to actually negotiate and reach a settlement, followed by drafting of a settlement agreement that includes all of the deal points negotiated by the parties. How, then, can a mediation possibly be successful in just a few hours? Why bother with a two-hour or half-day mediation if it’s probably going to take longer?

At a 2019 panel discussion before the ADR section of the King County Bar Association, someone asked how small-claims mediations could be successfully completed within an hour. The answer: “A lot of our mediations will go two or two and a half hours,” Win Todd of the King County Dispute Resolution Center answered. That is, they often go well over the one-hour scheduled time. But, Todd added, when it was necessary to adhere to the time limit, it was possible to get the mediation done quickly. How? “The task of the mediator is to be efficient,” he said, “to recognize and get to the negotiations as quickly as they can… to get the parties to focus.”

Parkinson's Law says that the amount of work expands to fill the time available for its completion. It applies to mediation, too. If you have all day, it will take all day--and then some. However, although a complex case probably cannot be successfully resolved after only two or three hours of mediation, many cases can be—if the mediator is efficient, gets to the heart of the dispute quickly, starts negotiations early in the process, and keeps the parties focused on moving toward a resolution—and if the parties and their attorneys are willing to work efficiently and stay focused on reaching a successful resolution through mediation. If everyone in the process mediates in good faith, stays focused, and works efficiently to reach a resolution, the mediation process does not have to go late into the night.

Of course, even if a skilled mediator and willing parties work hard to complete mediation on schedule, sometimes mediations go overtime. That’s not a bad sign, since most mediations that go longer than scheduled are resolved successfully. If it’s late and you’re wondering “Are we there yet?”, you probably are a lot closer to being there than you think.

For more information or to schedule a mediation, call Pacific States Mediation LLC at (206) 420-2466 or email us at pacificstatesmediation@gmail.com.