When I’m speaking to a prospective client for the first time, it’s not unusual for them to ask, “How much does mediation cost?”. I’ll usually say, “It depends on how many sessions you need. Most clients will have something like three to seven sessions – about 9-21 hours of my time. This works out to around £750 to £1,750 plus the cost of any outcome documents you want me to prepare.”

Solicitors don’t get asked the same question

Yet, when I practised as a solicitor, I can’t remember any clients asking me, over the phone during an initial chat, how much it was going to cost to sort things out. It was as if they knew that solicitors were expensive and that they were going to have to pay a lot of money. Better not to ask or they would only worry about where they were going to get the money from.

I remember a consultation I had with a man who was meeting with me after I had already met his wife. They were getting divorced and they had been referred to me for mediation by her lawyers to see if they could sort out the financial claims.

Private school lifestyle

He and his wife had a very comfortable lifestyle. They lived on a large estate and sent their children to private schools. But it seemed that they were only able to do so because of the support of parents because both husband and wife had jobs paying the minimum wage.

I don’t know what it was, though, about our discussion, but the husband gave a good impression of someone who wasn’t willing  to mediate.

He told me that his lawyers had estimated that going to court would cost him around £80,000. This was a figure which probably included the costs of getting land valued as the property situation was complicated. He asked me how much mediation would cost. I said, “Well, it depends on a number of factors. Given your situation, and the clear need to work with a financial planners and a surveyor as joint mediators in the process, you should probably budget for around £3,500 -£4,500.”

His response was an indignant, “How much?!”.

Mediation quicker

I reminded him that his solicitors had estimated £80K and that probably equated to around 300 hours of their time. His wife’s solicitors were also likely to need to record around 300 hours of work. That meant their lawyers, together, would be charging them for 600 hours of their combined time (working as adversaries).   On the other hand, my estimate equated to, at most, 60 hours of the combined time of me and two other professionals (working together co-operatively).

That didn’t convince him. The wife wanted to mediate but the husband didn’t. Why? Who knows? Maybe he didn’t take to me . Maybe he didn’t believe that mediation would work. Or maybe he thought that throwing £80K (probably of someone else’s money)  at a problem was more likely to result in him getting what he wanted, despite the fact that the outcome would rest on a judge’s arbitrary decision.

You can lead a horse to water

You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. If the husband’s solicitors had really wanted their client to benefit from mediation, mediation would have started. Mediation is an incredibly low risk and relatively low cost process. Those who take part have very little to lose and a great deal to gain.

I am Stephen G Anderson. I am a professional mediator. I am a non-practising solicitor.

Stephen G Anderson, family mediator

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