Two Game Changers in Mediation
{3 minutes to read} Two enormous “game changer” mediation moments came back-to-back recently. Let’s start first with the local news. On May 14th, New York State’s Chief Judge Janet DiFiore and Chief Administrative Judge Lawrence K. Marks announced a systemwide initiative in which parties in civil cases will be referred to mediation as the first step in the litigation process.
This is a very big deal. While it won’t happen overnight, this will eventually establish New York as the nation’s leader in making mediation an essential component of dispute resolution in the courts. Hundreds of thousands of cases that previously would have cost gobs of money and taken years to resolve — with limited input from the actual parties — will now go to mediation and get resolved with direct input and participation from the parties, with far less financial and emotional cost.