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2835 Belvidere Road
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Waukegan, IL 60085

(847) 520-8100

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Mediation Settlement

Jesse Barrientes: Sure.

David Siegel: If they see you for mediation, obviously there's a dispute. There's a misunderstanding. There's not an agreement. What do you do as a mediator, a facilitative mediator, to explain and make a recommendation?

Jesse Barrientes: First I think the folks of Waukegan should know that mediation is really a negotiation with the assistance of a third party. There are primarily three different types of mediation. You have facilitated mediation which is what you do in divorce mediation. There is evaluative mediation, and there's transformative mediation. Evaluative mediation is when the mediator looks at both of the parties and their situation. Let's take a personal injury type of scenario, and we're coming in to try and mediate, to work out a dispute, so we don’t have to go to trial, and parties can save money, and time, and effort, and everything will be wrapped up and taken care of.

The mediator is going to listen to both parties, going to look at the arguments, the evidence that they have, and they're going to make a determination, or make a suggestion on the strengths and weaknesses of each party's case. They're probably going to go back and forth, and they call that "shuttling", or they might do a caucus where they put somebody off to the side and just talk to that person, but what they're going to do is they're going to tell that person, "Hey, your case is okay, but here are some of the weaknesses. This is what they're offering, this is what they have, and you need to consider these other issues just so that you know." Then he's going to go to the other person and tell them, "Okay. True, you have these points on your side, but you need to look at this." So that's for the purpose of being able to make an evaluation of something, and to be able to kind of get rid of it.

David Siegel: You're also going to look at the medical records, the damages, the lost wages. They're going to know what jury verdicts reporters are going to give. They're going to have all that information that they can transform to the parties to try to bring a negotiated settlement, correct?

Jesse Barrientes: Right, and to try to get everybody taken care of so the process is over, and again, really, it's really an expensive proposition to litigate anything, especially a personal injury case. You have to have when you go to trial, bring in the doctors, or experts, and they charge for their time. There's a minimum amount of time that they charge for, so it's nice to get everything taken care of so everybody's out of the box and they can move on with their life, even though just the litigation has an adverse impact on people.

David Siegel: One of your jobs as a mediator then, if I'm understanding this correctly, would be to instill some realistic expectations in the parties?

Jesse Barrientes: A true facilitative means that basically I'm in charge of the process, and the people are in charge of the outcome. Again, just really quickly, the transformative mediation is sort of like something you want to happen for them to get more to a different level and a positive – when I think about it, I think about a therapy when somebody has—

David Siegel: Marriage counseling?

Jesse Barrientes: Yeah, when somebody has something like that, so something else comes out if they're expecting that kind of action, but with respect to facilitative which is what you do in divorce mediation, the whole idea is to help the parties come to a decision on their own. In terms of negotiation, there's a couple ways you can look at this. You can either take a kind of a win-lose situation. It's adverse any way you look at it. You could take a win-lose situation, and take that kind of mentality and attitude. "Okay. Well I'm only giving a little bit, and we're going back and forth." Or we can look at more of a win-win situation where what we're trying to focus on is solving the problems that underlie the issues that people have.

Mediation

When mediation is best

Mediating child issues

Cost of mediation

Success of mediation

Benefits of mediation

Proceeding past mediation

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