Mediation: what’s in it for employment lawyers?

Employment disputes often settle early on. But those that don’t can be long, expensive and damaging for clients. Then again, employment lawyers don’t have magic wands, do they ….?

No, but many employment lawyers could be doing more to drive the most difficult disputes towards earlier resolution, so that their clients don’t suffer those long, expensive and damaging legal battles.

But (I hear you lawyers silently wondering to yourselves….) what’s in it for us?.

Long-term success – I believe that’s what’s in it:

• Clients who’ll recommend you to anyone else who’ll listen, because you’ve navigated them safely through tricky situations.

• Clients who’ll be loyal to you because you find ways for them to get on with running their businesses (rather than tying them up in legal wrangles and costs).

• Referrers and contacts who’ll actively promote you because they know you have your clients’ interests at heart, rather than any short-term interest in maximising fees.

And yet, too many lawyers miss opportunities to promote and use mediation in employment disputes - even though they know mediation has a remarkable track record of resolving the most difficult imaginable disputes early, without the costs and risks of protracted litigation.

This isn’t usually because they’re greedy or reckless. From my own experience, it’s easy to be blind-sided by your own side’s incomplete perceptions of the case, the relentless pressure of the backwards-looking, forensic litigation process and looming Court or Tribunal deadlines.

Court and Tribunal rules increasingly seek to encourage mediation. Even so, once the litigation juggernaut has started accelerating down the hill, it can be hard to stop.

In the next blog post, we’ll look at how lawyers can divert that juggernaut.

Image: The Noun Project, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons