By Melannie H. Dino
Lead Family Law Attorney
Mediation is an effective way to resolve your family law disputes and reach an agreement because it is faster and less expensive than seeking a ruling from the Court. This is why Steven Krieger Law recently launched our own “in-house” mediation service. The most experienced attorneys at Steven Krieger Law are now serving as neutral mediators to hopefully resolve your dispute with the other party. We decided to offer this “in-house” service because too many families simply cannot afford to litigate because of the costs associated with each side paying attorney fees. With Steven Krieger Law Mediation, instead of each side paying for legal representation, both parties share the cost of a neutral mediator, one of our most experienced attorneys, which effectively reduces each side’s legal fees by 50%. In reality, the cost savings are significantly more than 50% when compared to litigation because instead of having an attorney litigate your case in court, which includes filing documents, conducting discovery, preparing for trial, and litigating the trial, you are sharing the details of your case with the neutral mediator, so the total amount of time you’d pay an attorney for legal representation would be greatly reduced through mediation.
Mediation also takes less time than litigation. You may be able to resolve your disputes in a few mediation sessions and have an agreement prepared by one of our attorney mediators. Mediators have flexibility in scheduling sessions based on the parties schedules. The Court has hundreds or thousands of cases to hear and thus the available calendar dates for a trial may be months or years in advance.
As mentioned above, mediation is typically less expensive than litigation. Litigation often involves discovery, motions, evidence, and hearings before the Court. Motions, hearings, and the discovery process can be very costly if each side has attorney representation. Parties may choose to participate in mediation without attorney representation and save costs by sharing the cost for the mediator’s time instead of each side paying their own attorney.
However, even if parties choose to be represented by attorneys throughout the mediation process, mediation is often still cheaper than litigation. In mediation, discovery (questions and requests for information and documents from the other side) is typically done informally and voluntarily. The parties bring the documentation and information to the mediator and share it for use in resolving their dispute voluntarily. In litigation, discovery is issued through formal requests and formal responses that must comply with specified procedures and deadlines to avoid Court sanctions. The formal discovery process is costly because counsel has to review the information and documents provided to determine if omissions or deficiencies need to be pursued through motions to the Court. In litigation, the attorneys also need to review the discovery to prepare evidence for use at trial. This review can be costly. The mediation process offers a quicker and less expensive alternative to litigation for resolving disputes.
Please contact Steven Krieger Law today for a consultation to discuss how our new mediation service could resolve your dispute effectively or how one of our experienced attorneys could represent you through mediation (or litigation).
