The esteemed Appellate Division Justice, the Honorable David B. Saxe, wrote an article for the New York Law Journal in 2011 entitled, "Encourage Divorce Clients to Mediate." As someone who is both a Mediator and a Divorce/Family Law Attorney with 23 years experience, I could not agree more. Of course, not everyone is a "mediation candidate." I have always said that Mediation works best where there is a level playing field, so to speak. Where one spouse greatly "overpowers" the other spouse, beats their chest and won't let the other person get a word in edgewise, there is not a "level playing field," and only the most skilled of mediators will be able to level the playing field and achieve a mediated resolution. In other cases, such as domestic violence, there is inherently an imbalance of power and mediation is not appropriate. However, in many cases that come before me, I recognize that the parties are 'mediation candidates" and I try to present Mediation as a viable option. Mediation is virtually always less expensive for the parties and therefore less "lucrative" for the attorney but it would be a shame to not mediate, simply because a divorce attorney failed to present the option. Litigation, or going to court, should be a last resort for most folks, not the opening salvo.
As Justice Saxe noted in his article, mediation clients have more control over their process, and ultimately it is the parties who craft the resolution in the end, not a judge who presides over them. Moreover, Justice Saxe pointed out that mediation clients tend to be more satisfied with their results than litigation clients. As Justice Saxe wrote, "if matrimonial lawyers focus om the larger picture, they might recognize that they stand to gain more in the long run from the good will and recommendations of satisfied clients than from the backlash of dissatisfaction in the wake of a typical unpleasant divorce."
And of course, there is the decreased expense of litigation with an experienced Attorney-Mediator. After all, as my longtime mentor, Phil Shatz always used to say: "Why use your money to put your attorneys' kids through college when you get use it to put your own kids through college."
Juliana LoBiondo
juliana@lobiondolaw.com
www.LoBiondoLaw.com
