We are all guilty of the quest for control. But let’s face it, you can be the smartest person in the world, the best lawyer, a good person, but the truth is nearly everything in this life is beyond your control.
You can’t change the weather. You don’t know who you will encounter on the road today. You can only do some much.
Litigation is the same way and in fact a function of something which preceded it which went out of control. You got in a crash, or someone violated the terms of a contract or some other legal harm. You didn’t want it to happen, but you couldn’t stop it.
Now that you are in litigation, you encounter a whole new realm of helplessness.
How the judge will rule on an important motion. Whether your best witness will come through his surgery. A new opinion from an appellate court which may affect the presentation of evidence in your case.
Then your case gets set for trial and when you ask your lawyer how all that works, they tell you it starts with picking a jury based on their qualifications through a driver’s license.
You try to read their minds and hope they tell the truth when questioned in voir dire, but your lawyer won’t know what the jurors are thinking until the verdict is read. You know there are great trial lawyers, and yours is one of them, but they can’t guarantee you anything other than a sincere and diligent effort.
But right now, the judge is ordering you to go to mediation And now you’re there.
And maybe for the first time since this whole ordeal started, you have a significant voice in how it could all end. You have control over your willingness to listen, to consider, to be reasonable and to understand that, in some instances, there is no shame in going to a place where you and your adversary can meet and agree.
They too must have that same mindset and exercise that same control in a responsible way.
Control means having some control in the outcome of mediation. That includes “no” as much as “yes.” The exercise of it is as important as the outcome.
There are cases where the case should and even must settle today at mediation. There are others where those folks with driver’s licenses should make the decision for you.
But either way, mediation gives you the choice as the decision-maker.
Musa Farmand is a certified circuit civil court mediator.