Litigation, arbitration, mediation: Which of the four-syllable words is the most satisfactory? Louie Castoria of Wilson Elser Moskowitz Edelman & Dicker evaluates, based on a psychological study of litigants’ fulfillment with the civil law process and the seven means of resolving a dispute, namely: attorney negotiation without clients, attorney negotiation with clients, jury trial, judge trial, judicial decision without trial, binding arbitration, and nonbinding arbitration and mediation.
“An interesting pattern emerged regarding the relationship between the parties and how they perceived their negotiation options,” said Castoria. If there was a preexisting relationship, the parties didn’t like their attorneys to negotiate without being present themselves, he says. Explains Donna Shestowsky, the author of the study: “This somewhat counterintuitive pattern suggests that although litigants who had a relationship with the opposing party were agnostic about the option that would allow them to interact with the other party, something about negotiations taking place without them was relatively unappealing,”
