Mediation can help you to put disagreements about the present and past behind you so you can focus on the future.
Mediation is a process that helps people to communicate freely so they can overcome a disagreement that prevents them from moving on with their lives. At the end of a successful mediation, everyone who was in disagreement previously signs a document called a “settlement agreement”. This document sets out how they have resolved their differences so they can put the past behind them, enabling them to focus on their present and future. Evidence and experience shows that successful mediation helps to achieve mutual contentment.
Mediation can be applied to many different types of dispute: legal, commercial, community, employment and more.
Disputes are often about perceptions of fairness, a difference in expectations or a balance of personal or commercial rights.
Perhaps someone expected something to happen and it didn’t happen. Or maybe it didn’t happen to the standard they expected. Such expectations could be around performance of a task, payment of money, or the supply of a product or service. Or something unexpected may have happened, so someone feels they should be compensated.
That’s just a few general examples, but there are very many more disagreements that can benefit from mediation.
It’s a voluntary process from start to finish. No one can be forced to mediate. Mutual contentment can only come about by agreement.
It’s also a confidential process. Nothing said or decided within mediation can be used outside the process unless everyone agrees. That confidentiality includes court proceedings and papers. That’s because anything communicated in mediation is “without prejudice”. In basic terms this means participants in mediation are not committed to anything they communicate in the mediation process, except a settlement agreement. Any fact revealed, any offer made or rejected, any opinion given – none of it can be mentioned in court documents or proceedings.
Sometimes people have lawyers, colleagues, friends and/or family members with them to help them with mediation, or merely to provide support.
It can be conducted in-person, via video call, on the phone, or even by text, email and letter.
We can host conversations with everyone sat together or we can shuttle between participants, so people in disagreement don’t even have to see or hear each other.
On request and agreement from all the participants we can facilitate any reasonable adjustments to the entire mediation process to make it as comfortable for all participants as possible.
It’s an incredibly flexible process that can incorporate numerous abilities, preferences or characteristics that the participants believe need to be accommodated to enable full participation.