I was recently asked an interesting question with the ongoing health crisis top of mind. The question was whether mediation can be used in emergency situations, meaning can it be conducted in a short time frame?

The assumption seems to be that mediations take hours or even days. The short answer is they can be concluded in just a few minutes. In fact, mediations in Small Claims Courts throughout the country are often finalized in 15 minutes or so.

So, the next question to ask is how are time compressed mediations possible? In training programs for people learning mediation skills I stress the following factors:

First: As disagreements carry on and grow people often lose sight of their original objective for resolving the conflict. This is why I ask disputants at the beginning of a session to establish an objective for what they would like to accomplish. With a defined specific objective people are better able to have an acceptable outcome.

Second: Just as people lose sight of their original objective, they also neglect to consider what will happen if the matter is not resolved. Negotiations and mediators refer to this as “Worse Alternative To A Negotiated Agreement” or “WATNA” for short. When people are aware of the consequences for not settling, they are again better able to be successful in mediation.

Lastly: I’ve often said that if a mediation starts at 10:00am in one room and another room at 11:00am, it’s practically guaranteed that both will conclude by lunch. Why? Because we are all motivated by deadlines—from “Sale Ends Friday” to “…finishing a project before a holiday.” Deadlines can’t be arbitrary and they need to impact both parties, but when used by the mediator the deadline can be a very strong motivator to help parties agreeably end a dispute.

For example in many a Small Claims Court, the mediator helps individuals establish an objective (“What would you like to see happen today?”), helps individuals understand the consequences of not settling (“If you are not able to reach an agreement, the judge will decide for you.”) and finally make it clear to the parties that in the court setting there is a limited time for the mediation.

Of course, many conflicts have complex or multiple issues and/or multiple parties which simply will require hours and even days of work, but many disputes can be resolved successfully within a small window of time.

With today’s Covid-19 virus concerns more people are taking classes online and working at home. I’ve been asked if mediation can be done .

The simple answer is yes. In fact, there is long history of conducting mediation remotely by various media from telephone to online.

Mediators have used conference call mediation for many years. Typically when the parties have work or parenting schedules and/or are located far apart. Of course, the mediator and the parties lose the nonverbal cues that face-to-face mediation presents, but some mediators find that not to be a barrier.

Closed-circuit television or online teleconferencing does permit parties to see one another. Closed-circuit televised mediation has a long history as well. It has been used in family mediation when one spouse feels threatened to be in the same room with the other. In these cases, one party was told to report to one location and the other elsewhere. Neither party were informed as to where each was located and the mediation proceeded via television.

And online mediation has a long history as well. I have been told that the first online session was conducted by a New Zealand mediator in the early days of the internet who resolved a dispute with parties living on different Pacific islands using just email.

The stimulus for online mediation (now known as Online Dispute Resolution or ODR) was the development of e-commerce. In 1995, eBay was launched and in 1999 sponsored a pilot program to mediate disputes between buyers and sellers online. With the success of the pilot, eBay initially contracted with an internet startup, Square Trade, to handle the program. The complaining party used email to explain the issue and suggest possible solutions. The defending party countered via email. If no agreement was reached, a mediator would intervene. By 2010, eBay said it handled over 60 million disputes online with an 80% settlement rate.

Today there are companies that provide online dispute resolution. One, Cybersettle, claimed to have settled $1.9 billion in medical billing and insurance claims. Online dispute resolution is now even being used in court cases and some jurisdictions are experimenting with online programs that permit disputants to deal with their issues solely online, avoiding having to appear in court.

So the answer is a resounding, “yes, you can mediate from home.”

(Actually Covid-19 has little to do with it as online dispute resolution will be how most mediations are resolved for various kinds of disputes in the future.)