Online mediation
Online technology - available on any computer, laptop, tablet or smartphone - can bring the mediation right into your office or home. Online technology allows clients, solicitors and counsel to join an online mediation from different locations, and provides virtual "rooms" where each side can confer in confidence. Alternatively, some lawyers and clients choose to gather physically in a solicitors' office or counsel's chambers even for online mediation, with the other side and the mediator in a different location, but joining online, and that can work too.
There are many advantages to mediating online: not just the saving of time and money (the fees are cheaper and there's also a saving in travel time and costs for the parties), but we often find that in the comfort of their own homes, or the familarity of their own solicitors' offices, people are more relaxed, and that makes for better mediation. Once they've tried it, clients tend to tell us that they prefer it. Plus, the lawyers tell us that if they're in their own office or at home they can get some chargeable work done in the "down time" whilst the mediator is with the other party, which sounds like a win / win to us!
If you're interestesd in the statistics as to whether online mediation works, our Senior Mediator, Martin Plowman, had a 92% settlement rate when mediating online in the period between March 2020 (when so much mediation went online with the start of the Coronavirus pandemic) to the end of 2023. Face-to-face mediations over the same period had a settlement rate of 77%
Does that mean online mediation is "better" than face-to-face mediation? Not necessarily, no. There could be other factors are play. Maybe the face-to-face cases were more difficult. Maybe. Maybe not. But it does mean that online mediation definitely works. And online mediation is definitely cheaper, and it's definitely more convenient. What's not to like?
Do get in touch with any questions, perhaps have a walk trhough the online platform with one of our mediators, and then give mediating online try. You may never want to travel to another mediation.