Another Benefit of Mediation: No Waiting in Court

There are advantages and disadvantages of mediation and you should consider both in deciding whether mediation is right for your case.

For instance, many people choose mediation because they believe it will be cheaper. In all cases that may not be true, but there is a difference between cost and value. Even if the cost of your mediation is higher than you were expecting, you can at least be confident that the time you were charged by your mediator was time spent on moving your case forward. Unfortunately this is not always the case when you go to Court.

Because there are so many other people seeking relief from the Court, I often have to explain to clients what I call "Hurry up and Wait." You have to be at the courthouse at your appointed time for any Motions, Pre-Trials, Contempt hearings, Trials, or other hearings. But there will likely be other cases waiting for hearing at that same time. And even if you are right on time, you will still likely spend hours waiting for your case to be heard. That time is time that your attorney cannot spend working on other cases and is therefore time you will be charged for. Essentially this means that when you go to Court you can end up paying your attorney for multiple hours, for work that could have been completed in a much shorter time working with a mediator.

Of course going to court is sometimes necessary because mediation requires both parties to voluntary participate. But if you are trying to decide whether to use mediation or not, think about whether you want to solve your problems, or wait (and wait, and wait) for someone else to solve them for you.

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