Guided Choice Mediation: Nuts and Bolts
This post is part of our Guided Choice Mediation series, where we explore what it is, why it improves on traditional mediation, and how it works. Guided Choice Mediation is an evolving process that expands and builds on more common place facilitated settlement conferences. Even a cursory review of Guided Choice principles demonstrates its potential to facilitate early resolution of complex legal disputes where traditional mediation would likely fail. Guided Choice Mediation has seven core principals: An obligation to mediate — in North Carolina an obligation to mediate is a part of every civil case. Notwithstanding our mandatory mediation, early mediation (even pre-litigation mediation) should be a feature of every dispute resolution clause. Retention of a mediator as early as possible — early retention of a mediator is likely to lead to earlier resolution. More importantly, in the pre-negotiation stage the mediator determines when and how the parties will negotiate and what information the parties need
