Court Ordered Mediation
Cheaper, faster, and altogether less unpleasant.
Court ordered mediation is exactly what it sounds like, the mediation that results from one party filing a suit, the other party responding, and the court ordering the parties to mediation. This is increasingly common in courts in California, and indeed obligatory for the majority of civil claims now filed. If you’ve been ordered to go to mediation, here’s the information you can use, and here’s why we think we’d be a good choice.
First and foremost, you want a firm that’s used to working with the courts. All our mediators are experienced with the court system and know what sort of documentation the court will require to certify that you did your part in going to ordered mediation. Worst case, you want to assure you can prove to the court you did what you were supposed to do. Best case, though, we can help you reach at least a partial agreement and help you save significant time and money in your case.
Often, there are a lot of disputes in a case that aren’t obvious in a case. The other party may have an entirely unrelated complaint that’s kept them fighting, or you may be mad about something outside of the court case that’s made it hard to find a settlement. The purpose of mediation, and the reason the courts refer so many cases out, is that mediation is much better positioned to get at these sort of subtle problems and we have a lot more freedom to craft resolutions. At the end, we often have a complete agreement that both parties are happy with, and both parties helped write.
The Process
Like normal mediation, court ordered mediation is confidential, voluntary, and your mediator will be neutral. The process of getting started is simple: you tell us what your dispute is, and we work with both parties to find a solution. We’ll let you know how a court would handle any of the issues here, and try our best to help both parties understand what the other party wants, and why.
We’ll contact you and the other party to see where the parties agree on the basic facts, and then the real work begins, as we help both parties move towards a complete agreement. Agreements in court ordered caseshave to be very personalized to work; our goal is to have an agreement that’s realistic and which both parties feel good about, so you won’t have to come right back or, worse, go back to court.
If this sounds good to you, please fill out this form, and we’ll get right back to you to let you know what we can do to help. All submissions are of course confidential.