Bottom Lines: Don’t Reveal, But Do Discuss
{3:54 minutes to read} In my last blog I discussed why you should not reveal your bottom line during a mediation. 
You can read that here.
My teaser line at the end was that it’s important for attorneys and clients to discuss bottom lines. And that discussion may have to occur several times. Parties generally enter a mediation with very different ideas as to what a case is worth or what it should settle for. The plaintiff thinks the defendant should take out the checkbook and be prepared to write a check with lots of zeros. The defendant thinks that any check should contain only zeros.
For all sorts of reasons, there are cases that can’t settle at mediation. However, the majority can and do eventually result in a settlement. Most of those could be resolved through mediation.