Mediation

As part of my third year, I get to work for a judge two or three times a week (which operates for all intent and purposes as an clerkship minus the salary and prestige of being called a clerk). When I'm in court, I get to do any number of things the judge throws my way. This usually involves legal research and writing as you would expect. Put another way, it's everything you would expect in a typical show about clerkships (or Supreme Courtships, if you will). Very glamorous stuff. Makes for good tv.

Every so often, as I did the other day, I get to sit in on a mediation, which is sort of like an arbitration but it's with a judge instead of a lawyer. Essentially what happens is that both sides meet in front of a neutral mediator (the judge), each present their side of why they should win if the matter were to continue to appeal or be brought in a suit, and over the course of hours, they reach some sort of middle ground. Usually no side is happy with the result, but that's the nature of mediation. It certainly is a cost-effective way of solving things and I'm surprised more parties don't exercise this option.

Obviously I can't go into any detail of what this mediation was about, but I will say that at one point the sides were bickering over the difference of a few thousand dollars, which may or may not have been relative to the bottom line number each side actually settled for in the end. While these final dollar amounts usually represent what I now call a "pride factor," I find it amusing how much pride still counts even after hours of arguing/negotiating and many more thousands of dollars in legal fees. Maybe at a certain point they ought to just paper, rock, scissors for the difference or, even better, just agree to give it to the clerk. The latter option works for me just fine.