After practicing law for nearly 20 years, it’s not too often that something new happens, but that happened for me a couple weeks ago. It happened following the mediation of an employment case.

I have mediated dozens, if not hundreds, of cases over my career. For the business and employment litigation matters I handle on a regular basis, mediation often can be a critical resource to get a case resolved. Business owners paying out of pocket and devoting hours of their time to a case (instead of their business) generally need to make a business decision on how best to move on and do what’s best for the company, and mediation is typically very helpful with bringing that necessary closure.

I have been lucky to work with many great mediators over the years. While I also have had experiences with ineffective mediators, I never had what happened to me recently. We were mediating an employment case with claims by the company I represent against the employee and vice versa. We were using a mediator recommended by the other side. After mediating the case for nearly an entire day, we decided to call it quits so that we could provide to provide additional information to the employee’s attorney to help bring the parties closer. We were still very far apart and needed to regroup.

Immediately following the close of the mediation for the day, I received a call from the employee’s attorney. She did not feel the mediator had conveyed their position correctly. As we discussed it more, it turns out she was right. She wasn’t getting accurate information regarding our position, and I wasn’t getting accurate information about their position.

Despite thinking we were very far apart still, her side really wanted to get the case resolved and had a new settlement proposal that was significantly closer to where we were. After another day of back and forth negotiating directly with the attorney, we were able to come to terms on a deal.

Mediators often serve as a critical neutral intermediary to convey positions between attorneys who want to advocate and clients who don’t want to give an inch, but the opposite held true here. Needless to say, I don’t think we’ll be selecting this mediator for our next one.