Mediation Negotiation Technique

If you’re a party to a lawsuit, mediation may be the right path for your case, instead of taking the matter to trial.

Litigation attorney discusses one mediation technique in this article.

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Negotiating with Brackets during Mediation

If you’re ever in a mediation you can use some of these tactics. Now everyone has their own way to negotiate. As I always say to my clients, there’s really no rhyme or way to do these types of negotiations.

But after seeing hundreds of meditations these are some of the sort of things that I would like you to keep in mind if you’re in a mediation and trying to get the best resolution as possible.

Here’s What My Mediation Looks Like

So generally when I meet with a client right before mediation, some of the first words that come out of my mouth are, we’re gonna start high, they’re gonna start low and we’re gonna meet somewhere in the middle.

The Goal

And hopefully when we meet to that number in the middle, hopefully that’s a number that you would be able to live with. A number that you could be able to live with without taking the risk of trial.

As much as we at Robinson & Henry love trial and love to go to trial, trial is always considered risky. So, we’d love to try to settle cases at mediation.

So one of the tactics is what happens if you’re really high or they’re really low or you’re really low and they’re really high and it’s been taken an hour and you really can’t find a resolution. So what you should do in that type of situation is pull the mediator over and potentially propose to have a bracket.

A Mediation Bracket

So what a bracket is, is that basically you’re gonna come up to a number as long as they come down to a number or vice versa.

Example 1

So let’s say if they’re at a hundred dollars and you’re at $1 and there’s really just, you’re too far apart where you just literally can’t get to a resolution in a normal amount of time.

So generally what a bracket would look like is say to the mediator, “Hey can you propose a bracket will come up to $30 if they come down to $60.”

Something like that that’ll work that way it saves time, and it sort of solidifies that you’ll hopefully get to a number that you’re hoping for.

Example 2

Another thing that you generally wanna hope for a mediation is get to a point where you’re matching. So if you’re at a hundred dollars and we’re at $1 and we gotta $3, the other side goes down $2, generally that’s, what’s known as matching and you wanna keep matching us as much as possible because what happens is you’re gonna meet in the middle and all parties are gonna be happy.

As soon as when one party or another party stops matching, then you stop matching and you slow up or you go faster based on what they’re doing.

If you have any questions about mediation or negotiation tactics, or if you have any problems with these types of strategies, please give me a call at Robinson Henry we’d love to help you. Thank you so much and take care.