Originally from Alternatives to the High Cost of Litigation

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Do you give evaluations when you mediate?

I suspect most of us do, although we may not consider what we do to be “evaluation” at all. At this link, excellent mediators present their viewpoints about a wide variety of topics, and in different ways: tinyurl.com/GolannEval. As I viewed these videos, I was surprised by what I found.

First, even mediators I had been told were strongly evaluative never placed a specific value on a case. No one said, for example, “Based what I’ve heard today, I think the court is likely to return a plaintiff verdict of around $500,000,” or, “I see a four out of 10 chance of your winning,” much less that “this case should settle at $900,000.”