Managing Mistrust in Mediation - Maryland Daily Record

Want to destroy any potential for mediation to work its magic? Employ over-the-top adversarial tactics such as pressing specious arguments, obscuring weakness, injecting hostility, etc. These techniques rarely work as intended - unless the goal is to create impasse. It’s hard to get a deal in mediation when the parties and their advocates threaten to crush each other in court, or divert attention away from main evidentiary risks, or remain attached to positions not sincerely held, etc.

These problems reflect a lack of trust between the participants. Although the parties or their lawyers may behave in ways that cause mistrust, sometimes the bargaining dynamic has mistrust baked into it. In other words, sometimes there are very good reasons why the parties should not trust each other.

To read more, a PDF copy of the article is available here.