Segment 1: Friedman Mediation. Our guest on this edition of The Doug Noll Show is Bruce Friedman. Bruce is a former partner at Bingham McCutchen, LLP, has more than 37 years of complex litigation experience in the insurance, financial services and products, and class action areas. He is also the founder of Friedman Mediation (http://friedmanmediation.com/). Bruce has been a practicing trial lawyer for many years, but found that his greatest satisfaction was in evaluating cases and trying to resolve them as quickly as possible for his clients. Mediation allows him to exhibit his natural ability to analyze legal issues as well as resolve matters in a timely manner.
Segment 2: Legal Negotiation. Doug and Bruce are both amazed by how little trial lawyers – even sophisticated and very experienced lawyers – actually know about legal negotiation. Generally speaking, they usually don’t understand the process and do not come to the session with a written concession agreement. Bruce has found the initial offer is often a shock, and it takes a long time for the parties to “get real” about what needs to happen in a mediation session.
Segment 3: Constructive Conversation and Creative Thinking. If a young lawyer came to Bruce and said he or she wanted to learn about working with a mediator, Bruce would first tell them to take classes to learn about the process. He would also stress that they should know their case, be prepared to discuss the case in a reasonable manner with the mediator, and be creative to find solutions to the case.
Bruce reminds us that clients can win in mediation. They can win in the sense that they can sometimes get a better settlement in mediation then they would in a trial. Additionally, it’s an opportunity for the lawyers to engage in a much more constructive conversation than they generally get to do in the context of litigation, and to offer some very creative and out-of-the box thinking that is not allowed in court.
Segment 4: Take Advantage of the Mediation. Bruce is seeing a trend these days to cut expenses by settling cases and not incurring additional expenses by furthering the case and taking it to trial. There is an effort to cut legal budgets within corporations as well. He is also finding people are willing to mediate earlier rather than later. He doesn’t think experienced lawyers appreciate how important it is to try to get closure at mediation. They need to really take advantage of the mediation process. Having all parties present and available to speak with each other is not likely to happen in court, or ever again.
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