November 23, 2023 • 35 mins
Hi, welcome to MediatorPodcast.com, a podcast and video series about mediation, negotiation and collaboration. My name is Melissa Gragg, and I'm a valuation expert and divorce mediator in St. Louis Missouri – specializing in divorce and partner disputes.
Today we are with Joseph Panetta from Immediation: a holistic legal dispute resolution platform that combines multiple processes and apps into one customizable interface. We are going to talk about The Rapid Rise of Mediation: Creating Efficient Dispute Resolutions.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, welcome to mediator podcast.com, a podcast
and video series aboutmediation, negotiation, and
collaboration. My name isMelissa Greg , and I'm a
valuation expert and financialmediator in St. Louis,
Missouri. Today we're gonnatalk about mediation with
Joseph Panetta from inMediation. It's a holistic
(00:20):
legal dispute resolutionplatform that kind of puts a
lot of things together,processes, apps into one
interface. And today we'reactually gonna talk about the
rapid rise of mediation and howwe create an efficient dispute
resolution system. Um, andwelcome. How are you?
Speaker 2 (00:43):
It's so great to be here, Melissa. Thanks for
having me.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
So we might have some comical relief during this
process because you know, it ,it is late on an afternoon and,
you know, we're, we're funindividuals, but this is a
topic that is a little near anddear to my heart, and obviously
to yours. Um, but most peopledon't. Totally. They're like,
are you talking about mediationor meditation or what is this?
(01:11):
So maybe we should just startoff with explaining to people
why we are passionate aboutthis and why the majority of
businesses and individuals andsuch will likely be using
mediation , um, when they havesome issues with other people
and other entities. But tell usabout how people are using medi
(01:34):
meditation. No mediationworldwide.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Exactly. And you know, we're, this is an
exciting time to be inmediation because it is growing
globally at a very fast pace.
And, you know, we can talkabout that sort of locally and
globally. So let's, let's sortof unpack it a bit. The
European Union mediation is nowrequired in all intellectual
property disputes. The Dutchcourts are looking at off
(02:04):
shouldering court cases intomediation first as a means of
increasing their disposal ratein Dubai, all disputes that is
both corporate and personalmust go through mediation
first. That's a recent law.
Egypt, all of , uh, the familyand economic cases have to go
through mediation first, provethat they have made a valiant
(02:26):
attempt at mediation before itactually gets in front of the
bench. The law in New Zealandforbids banks from foreclosing
on small farm loans, so theycan't litigate them into
foreclosure. They must mediatethem as a form of dispute
resolution if the farm is , uh,delinquent on its loan
payments. And then finally, youlook at something like equine,
(02:47):
which is a new mediationclient. It's a French
institution that's , uh, that'scomprised of former c-suite
officers. And these gentlemenand ladies step into complex
cross-border disputes, wherethe value of the relationship
between the parties over thelong term is actually greater
than the issue at hand. Now,that gives you a sense of sort
(03:10):
of like the broad scope globaluptick in the use of mediation
as a dispute resolutionmechanism. Let's take a look at
the US for a second. New Yorkis focused on what , what they
call presumptive ADR. This hasbeen floating around now for
several months, and there ispretty much widespread
understanding it's going topass. That means every single
(03:33):
dispute must go to mediationbefore it gets to a bench.
Every , there are no, there'sno sort of threshold for that,
which is very interesting. Andas you and I can both
appreciate when you are a largestate with a large court system
like New York, when it happensthere, it sort of sends a, a
ripple through the , the other49 states , Florida,
(03:56):
California, Texas, all verylarge states with very large
court systems. They all havesome form of ADR workflow,
right? So there's this workflowthat's, that is disburdening
the court system of theseinitial hearings and cases
through mediation. So ourmessage to mediators is, get
ready, because with thisincreased push to mediation,
(04:21):
your skills are going to beneeded and required. So you
need, if you're not ready, youneed to get ready to get ready.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
I think that's a great point, Joseph. Part of it
is also from a businessstandpoint, what we have been
finding is contractually, youknow, just think of any time
you sign an agreement to dosomething with another company,
there's usually an arbitrationclause that says at least you
(04:48):
need to go outside of thecourt. But for the most part,
arbitration is very similar tocourt. So people are actually
going to mediation to kind ofdo an alternate dispute
resolution option, but not bein that more formalized , um,
arbitration. So I think thatthere's, it's sort of like
(05:11):
mediation might be an optionfor really, and , and what you
have talked about in a lot ofcontexts previously to this is
that it's a relationship. So ifa company's fighting another
company and they have alongstanding relationship going
into court for one littleissue, when they're gonna
(05:33):
continue, that relationship isactually counterproductive. But
there's a lot of otherindicators of like, that
mediation is gaining afoothold. Maybe you can tell us
a little bit more, becauseagain, I think that this is a
very exciting space for allfinancial people, not just
(05:53):
evaluators, but anybody withfinance in their background or
law in their background. Right?
Speaker 2 (06:01):
100%. And I think, you know, what, what we're
talking about now is therelationship that people have
when they go into a dispute,particularly a corporate
dispute or a personal dispute.
One where there's, you know,whether it's a low value or
high values in material isabout the relationship. And now
it has hit a dispute moment.
The issue with arbitration,much like court, is that it
(06:23):
sets up an adversarial process.
Mediation by its very nature isa collaborative process. And so
I think that differentiatorright there, it's, it's an
assisted collaborative process,but that makes it a very
different approach fromarbitration. And, you know,
from when you consider some ofthe other indicators that are
pushing mediation forward,there's the Singapore
(06:44):
Convention, which is formediation, what the New York
Convention was for arbitration,which you mentioned earlier.
The New York Convention, Ibelieve was signed in 1950, and
it was ratified by countriesall over the world. And it
ensured enforcement of arbitralawards. Well , the Singapore
Convention does the same thingfor mediated settlements. And
there are now more than 55countries that have signed the
(07:05):
Singapore Convention, thelatest of which was the uk. And
what that means is if you havea settlement agreement between
two companies, that might , onemight be in , uh, you know,
Egypt and the other one mightbe in France, but your
agreement can be enforced inthe uk, it can be enforced in
Singapore, it can be enforcedin any of the 55 countries that
have signed that agreement. Andwhat it does, I think for the
(07:29):
listeners, your listenersspecifically this audience, is
that it gives them peace ofmind that the negotiated
settlement that they've helpedto arrive to will be upheld in
all of these jurisdictions.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
Yeah. I I think that some of the, you know, dispute
resolution in a mediation or anarbitration has been around for
a significant amount of time.
So this isn't a new concept,but quite frankly, it has been
underutilized. And so I thinkthat a lot of people have kind
(08:02):
of waited around wells tell mehow to deal with this in my own
space. Right? And what I'mseeing is that you really have
to be kind of a pioneer in thisspace and say, okay, because I
do mediation more specificallyfor divorce and partner
disputes, right? They're verydifferent than corporate
(08:23):
disputes, you know. So is theremore a driving push for
mediation in the, the moreprivate sector or the public
sector? Or does it even matter?
Speaker 2 (08:37):
I don't think there's a different , a line of
differentiation between thetwo. I think historically,
you're right, mediation in theUnited States was looked at as
the domain of like familycourt, divorce, court
settlements, those kinds ofthings. And, you know,
historically, for good reason,it was about a relationship
that needed the two people tocome together. And it doesn't,
it , it's not a win-losescenario. Mm-Hmm.
(08:58):
, right? It's more of a how dowe get to a comfortable
conclusion for everyone. Butthere was a , an interesting
article that ran in theGuardian , uh, last October,
and it said that the pandemicadded six years to the backlog.
Mm-Hmm . Of courts six years.
That is a very long time towait to get in front of a
neutral. Most parties, itdoesn't matter what kind of
(09:21):
dispute you're in a good 90plus percent of the time. One
thing that both parties in thedispute have in common is they
want to get it over with soonerrather than later, right?
Mm-Hmm. ,sometimes they want other
things more than they want toget it over with, which stands
in the way of the speed. But ata minimum, getting the process
started is what we think of it, of ADR as appropriate dispute
(09:43):
resolution. So you havemediation, you have
arbitration, you havelitigation, of course you have
negotiation, but in there youhave a Penelope of opportunity
to arrive at a conclusion. Theproblem is you can't get
started as fast in arbitrationor in litigation as you can
with mediation. Mm-Hmm.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
. And
it's, it's also about having a
process and having, you know,like it's, it , it's a classic
situation, but we, we had thatin litigation that if you
become an expert, it's like,how do you get your first case?
Well, you need to testify toget your first case. And you're
like, well, I need to testifyto get, you know, like it's a
(10:24):
chicken and the egg. But it'sthe same with mediation, you
know? So there, there areopportunities that you can get
in groups and, and get trainedand, you know, partner with
different types of people. Butrealistically, you still gotta
figure out like where you fitand, and what your process is
(10:44):
and how you are going toutilize structures. 'cause it ,
in a lot of mediation, you arethe one, right? Like, there's
not somebody else to look overand be like, Hey, what would
you,
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Oh,
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Oh yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm the person. But a lot of
times when people are cominginto meeting , 'cause we, we
can get into the back end ofwhat mediation looks like, but
for people, right. What isappealing about mediation in
general? Like, why wouldsomebody choose to go this
(11:16):
route when it's a little bit ofan unknown or you don't know
the players, you know, like,why do we care?
Speaker 2 (11:25):
I would sum up the most appealing factors for
mediation in sort of four bigbuckets. And the first is
creativity. Um, Recently Iwrote an article for , uh,
Bloomberg Law about how AI maybe helping the legal profession
in a lot of ways, but it couldnever replace the human element
of mediation ever. Mm-Hmm .
. And here's,here's a great story that I
(11:46):
heard recently. Mediatorrecounted this , uh, mediation.
She was holding between , uh,co-leaders of a company. It got
to a point where they needed toseparate. And it was a years
long mediation. It took a very,very long time. It was a lot to
unpack. And they finally getdown to the very last point.
And the amount of money isnegligible in the scope of the
much larger, you know, fundsthat they were dealing with.
(12:08):
But they would not budge.
Neither party would finallygotten to the point where it
was basta we're done. And sothe mediator very cleverly,
creatively came up with thissolution. It's a nominal amount
of money. Why don't each of yousplit the money in half and
donate to charity in the nameof the other party? Boom, it
was done because now it was nolonger a payment to the other
(12:31):
side. It was a charitablecontribution and it got over
that last hump. And that is thekind of thing for me, where
arbitration and litigation havevery black and white outcomes.
It's very win-lose, as youmentioned earlier, mediation
can be creative in itsoutcomes. Like they don't have
to be so black and white. Andthat's one of the things I love
the most. And the second wouldbe nuance. You know, just
(12:51):
mentioning ai, how manydifferent ways can you say the
words? Oh, really? Oh, really?
Oh really? Oh, really? There isdisbelief. There's, in
incredulity there's, you know,new awareness and AI can only
understand one version. Thewritten version, the tone with
(13:11):
which you say it conveyseverything. That's why the
human element cannot, thatnuance right there, that
understanding of the, theethical and canon components,
you can't remove that. Probablythe third biggest tent pole in
one of the ones that yourclients I think would really
appreciate and thatcorporations really go for is
confidentiality. Why do youthink the Fox News Dominion
(13:34):
voting machine scandal on thesteps of the courtroom was
mediated into a settlement?
Because, probably becauseRupert Murdoch didn't want all
of those text messages floatingaround in the public eye.
Because once it's public in alitigation form , it is public,
public, then you can see all ofthe dirty laundry from both
(13:54):
sides. And so mediation offeredthem a chance to do this
confidentially. What's greatabout that, if you're a
corporation, a mediated termsof a mediated settlement don't
have to be disclosed oractually cannot be disclosed in
any shareholder filings or SECfilings or anything like that.
Merely the fact that there is asettlement may not even be
reportable. So confidentialityrange supreme, this is why
(14:15):
mediation and corporatedisputes is getting larger and
larger. And finally, it's whatwe said earlier, speed. It's
about, it's about getting tothe process so that you can
move on from it. So it'screativity, nuance,
confidentiality, and speed.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
So I wanna go back to creativity because I really
like this one and I think thatit's a little bit lost because
we're legal people, we'refinancial people and you know ,
um, we do things likespecifically right by the
numbers, by check the boxes anddo all that. I've seen some of
the best mediators haveexperience or you know , like
(14:53):
the level of experience is ofcourse important. But if you
know the area that you aremediating in immaculately,
right? You have seen so manycombinations of how a deal has
been structured or settled thatyou sort of have this entire
(15:13):
bank of ideas, right? But thatis an active process of
collecting how you can becreative. And it just, a lot of
it's , um, you know, 'causethe, the story that you gave,
basically the, the remainingfinancial issue wasn't a
financial issue. It was apersonal issue. And people are,
(15:36):
you know, like financial peopleand , um, lawyers don't always
wanna get in the mud when ithas to do with an interpersonal
relationship issue. Right? Sotalk more about like, how we
come in. 'cause a little bit ofthe ai, 'cause we had talked
about ai, right? And we hadtalked about mediation is a
(15:59):
very interesting space becauseyou still have to show up and
you have to like, activelycoordinate a settlement of an
unknown. It's literally anunknown. Like you don't know
how it's gonna end and you hopeit ends well, but you don't
know. Talk more a little bitabout, you know, what goes into
some of that creativity. Isthat just some of the resources
(16:22):
that you're using? You know,'cause we're gonna shortly get
into kind of what you do andhow we combine all of this.
But, you know, start to talkhow you build a practice in
this space.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
I think it boils down to you , you know what,
you know, so you become a bitof a subject matter expert to ,
to your point earlier, like you, you need to have a grounding
in one or more particularareas. They're in areas that
you studied, areas that , thatare interesting to you. But you
need to have some understandingto understand the jargon, to
understand sort of like where,where people are coming from.
(17:00):
There's an enormouspsychological piece to this in
the, in the story that Irelated earlier. You're
absolutely right, the mediatordiscovered that the issue was
not a financial issue. It was afinancial issue masquerading ,
um, over a personal, sort ofstuck in the crawl , right?
Mm-Hmm., it's apsychological question. It's
(17:20):
what's as the French say?
What's What's,what's the ulterior reason
that's driving you to thissticky point? Mm-Hmm.
. In other words,what's really going on here?
Like, is this really about themoney? Because if it's really
about the money, then thisseems like the most logical
solution. It's the cool, calmvoice. It is the logic, right?
(17:41):
And you really can't combat anemotional argument with logic,
but you can use logic to fueland redirect emotionality. And
I think that's what mediaskilled mediators do very well.
They diffuse the emotionalityby, by directing it in a
different way, in a differentdirection. And I think that's,
that's a true skill in terms ofbuilding you need, you need
(18:03):
testimonials, but it's hard todo because you've done
settlements for people that areconfidential. Mm . But you can
use stats, facts and figures.
You can use genres and buckets.
Um, you can actually usetestimonials from people that
are just a party that aren't,they're not named, they're not
identifiable. The testimonialcan't be this person conducted
an X for me. Mm-hmm.
, it has , I wentthrough the process with, and
(18:24):
this is what I felt about it.
Those kinds of things. And Ithink those are people in a
business context specificallyrecommendations from people
like me, other executives,people in my genre, people in
my cohort. Thoserecommendations go much
further. I don't even need todo that much vetting to pick up
the phone and say, so-and-sotold me I should call you.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
Mm-Hmm.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Those referrals and recommendations I think about
word of mouth is that it's hardto control. So we , we'll get
into it in a moment. Um, howmediators can better prepare,
you know, for, for this kind oflike increase and how they can
ready themselves. But I thinkthat's part of the conversation
we want to conclude with, is toleave the audience with some
tips.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
Well, and I think that that is one of the, the
bigger issues is like, youknow, we're professionals that
have been doing this work for along time, doing this work in a
mediation setting becausethere's benefits to having
skilled financial people in themediation setting, right?
There's actually so many skillsyou need to be a successful
(19:29):
mediator. It's kind ofridiculous. Um, and a lot of
them are not necessarily hardeducation, right? It's
interpersonal skills. It'sbeing able to sense when
somebody is not speaking. It's,you know, I love Chris Voss and
his negotiation. He's AFBInegotiator because I was like,
(19:50):
oh my gosh, you know, and , andhe even said something, it's
like every day there are thesenuances of what you can say.
You know, somebody says, oh, Ireally hate that person. You're
like, you know, you must have areally good reason for that.
And then they start, I do, letme tell you what the reason is.
It's very simple communicationthings that you can do to
(20:14):
manage the room. But if youdon't even know where to get
started, I would say if youhave a knowledge base, you
probably have the capability ofbeing a mediator. If you wanna
deal with people, if you don'twanna deal with people, it's
online. So, I mean, you know,for the most part, but let's
(20:37):
talk a little bit about how youcan get prepared. Because if
you're still doing tax returnsor if you're still doing, you
know , traditional financialand accounting work, this is an
opportunity to get ahead of thegame, in my opinion.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Absolutely.
Absolutely. Especially if youhave that kind of financial
education and underpinning ,um, to get into the corporate
dispute arena makes a hell of alot of sense because you
already have, what, what is,what is an organization going
to need to mediate as acorporation? It's almost always
gonna come down to money. Someform , whether it's accounting
or a financial transaction or avendor relationship or
(21:15):
something like that. But froma, from a preparation
standpoint, if you are a solemediator or you belong in the ,
in the dispute resolutioncenter, you have to increase
awareness. Not just, this goesback to what you were saying
earlier, not just about you asa mediator, but what mediation
can do for you. Fill in theblank audience, right? Mm-Hmm.
it . You have toalso rely on some feeders. And
(21:36):
that can be local courts or lawfirms that can provide you with
, uh, you know, passive revenuestreams. Active revenue comes
from driving awareness abouthow mediation can be effective
to the various audiences youwish to serve. And then you
have to differentiate yourselfbecause you are not alone, even
though you will be a rare birdin the , um, you know, coming
weeks and months as all of thissort of mediation, froth begins
(21:59):
to steam up. Most of the solopractitioners who sign up for a
mediation want to givethemselves a competitive
advantage. They're looking forsomething that po that
positions them as ahead of thepack or at the forefront of the
technological innovation sothat it ticks a box in many of
their clients' minds that,okay, this person's on the
(22:21):
cutting edge. Then I think, youknow, to your point about it's
online, you have to be able todo both remote and hybrid. Um,
and I went to the InternationalMediation Summit in Salzburg,
Austria earlier this year. Andone of the mediators there is a
former gc. She mediates , um,complex , uh, workplace
disputes. And she hated thepandemic 'cause she hated doing
(22:42):
these things on Zoom. But ifyou are a mediator and you're
doing a corporate dispute andthe corporation happens to be
in another state and the CEO orthe CFO or the COO needs to be
present, pulling them out oftheir role for a few days or a
week or whatever is actuallymore deleterious to the
(23:04):
business than them joining thismediation, offering them the
option to connect in a remotebut secure way that maintains
the confidentiality, thatmaintains the privilege, right?
That actually adds to yourdifferentiation. I can do this
with you in a hybrid way. Thatis a huge plus. And finally,
it's about security. Because ifthe confidentiality is in any
(23:28):
way, shape, or form breached,you're sunk. So you need to
choose a tech partner that hasbest in class security. Our
system has 43 different modulesand they can be custom
configured in any way. You needchoose two, choose three,
choose 20, whatever it is, andthen it's white labeled so that
it looks and feels like yourbrand. And that's how your
(23:49):
clients interface and interactwith you. And I think what
what's important about that iswhen you have a system that has
unparalleled security that wasbuilt from the ground up
specifically for mediation,literally like it was created ,
it wasn't technology that'sbeing retrofitted for this use,
it was built specifically foryou. So bespoke built , purpose
built in legal, that's hard tofind. Mm-Hmm, .
(24:11):
Mm-Hmm . It'seasy to find a lot of
technology that Oh yeah, we cando that too. No, no, you can't.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
Yeah. And I, I posted the website below, but
why don't we talk a little bitabout that? Because I think
that mediation is a little bitof the wild west right now. And
I think that if you need ananchor or you need a guidepost,
right, you need to startreaching out that things, not
just training, but liketechnologically how you're
(24:40):
going to stay up on things.
Because for the most part, if,if it, if you're mediating
between more than two people,you, you, you now have to have
the space. You have to havemultiple conference rooms to
separate people out in you.
'cause you might caucus, youknow, you need , uh, snacks,
(25:01):
you need drinks, you needparking, you need , um, staff
to help. If I have a mediationwith six people and I do it
online, for the most part, I'mhandling that internally in
some capacity. Right? But tellus more about the resource that
you actually have that couldreally help us and tell people
(25:25):
if you're gonna give them likea , a , a tutorial or something
if they call you
Speaker 2 (25:29):
Always. We , we , we have a white glove service and
we have sort of 24 7 customersupport. So that's, that's not
even a question , but the truthis, our goal is not to redesign
a mediator's process, right?
Not by any stretch of theimagination. Our goal is to
digitize the process theyalready use. So we are happy to
API into your accountingsystem, your case management,
(25:51):
whatever it is, to offer you asingle pane of glass to do
exactly what you do with paperand 12 different apps between
WhatsApp and, you know, other ,other video platforms and
whatnot. We collapse all ofthat into one screen so that
from, from literally inceptionto settlement, you can see
every stage in betweentemplated , um, you know,
(26:11):
letters and , and outboundemails, what you just
described, having six people inseparate rooms and all that.
You actually can do everysingle one of those things on
one screen, on the screen infront of you with the six
people. You can mute people,you can turn off their camera,
you can let them go off intotheir party rooms by
themselves. You can knock onthe door and ask them if
they're ready to come back into caucus. So there's even the
(26:33):
ability to upload settlementagreements and have a pass the
pen function so everyone canfeel like they get a chance to
weigh in they off , they havesome kind of , um, um, control
over the outcome, which is, youknow, in a mediation scenario,
very important that people feelthat they got to put their
thumbprint on that settlementagreement in a real way. Mm-Hmm
. when they cansee their words being typed on
(26:55):
in the agreement and they kindof go back and forth, there's a
whole sense of participation.
And then finally we have aDocuSign integration. So by the
time people leave thisplatform, they can have signed
the settlement agreement andit's done. There's no more
banting back and forth afteryou've left the room. It's done
while you're on the screen.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
And like literally if people don't know this, it
could take forever to just, ifyou leave that room and you
don't have anything signed,that could take just as long
that you got to that agreement,right? Because everybody's
going back and re-trading andrenegotiating and things like
that in the background. Um,what you said was really
(27:37):
interesting because I thinkthat for a lot of mediators,
when they get involved withmediation, they're like, zoom
becomes their best friend. Andeven the court system has
realized, you know, the , um, Iguess the, the security issues
with some of the onlineplatforms and have created
their own platforms. Now,mediation is a way that you can
(28:00):
do the same work that you woulddo in litigation but not have
to testify, which is also supercool. But if you think that
you're going to start mediatingwith like an Apple or a
Southwest Airlines or somelarge company and not have a,
and be like, Hey, join my Zoommeeting,
Speaker 2 (28:21):
Their gen , their general counsel is going to
scream bloody murder, don't doit. And it's actually already
happening. Baker McKenzie's anenormous, it's one of the
world's largest law firms, oneof their three main practice
areas is dispute resolution.
Their GC has been screaming atthe entire team globally, stop
uploading documents into Zoom.
It's not safe. Understand thatZoom recently put out , um, an
(28:41):
update to its terms of service,which says if your face appears
on Zoom, it goes to train RAI .
If you upload a document intoZoom, it goes to train our ai .
If you record a transcript onZoom, it goes to train our AI
without user consent. And weare sitting on the other side
of it going, okay, I understandwhy you might want to train
(29:04):
your ai, but without userconsent and in a legal text ,
uh, legal context, could thatpotentially mean there's a
third party in the room? Likewhat ? So that, and we've asked
that question and the standardresponse is , that's a good
question. Which of course meansthey don't have an answer.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
Yeah. So that's, that's a little bit jarring for
us. That's why we're, we, werevery happy to have literally
built our video platform fromthe ground up. It is neither
Zoom nor teams. It isaltogether something that's
bespoke built it . One of themost interesting reactions we
get from mediators and, and uh, folks in , on the legal side
when they see the platform isthey constantly talk about how
(29:42):
well thought through it isbecause it was created by a
mediator, an arbitrator, and alitigator. It was created by
somebody who sits in that seatand understands those
challenges. So you cannotaccidentally put someone in the
wrong breakout room. A personcannot see something that
they're not meant to see aphotograph, a piece of
evidence, whatever. It's notpossible on our platform. And I
(30:04):
say that hand on heart becauseI, I do know, I've , I've
spoken with judges and they useshare file and Dropbox links
and things like that. And yes,they've had the Alex Jones
moment where they'veaccidentally given the wrong
link to one side and those areall actually potentially
appealable issues.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I think that part of what
you're also talking about iseven being connected to you or
utilizing, you know, yourplatform, it , you're kind of
keeping people in compliance,right? Like you're kind of
doing the research of what youneed to be doing and make sure
you check that box and whatabout this and did you finish
(30:41):
the , you know, so I meanthat's a lot of compliance to
make sure you know, thatgetting to the settlement is a
hard process, but thenfinalizing it
Speaker 2 (30:52):
Can even be harder .
And you mentioned somethingearlier that um, actually
there's a stat for , uh,Bloomberg did a stu a survey at
the end of last year andpublished it in January that
showed that lawyers are usingmore tech than ever before, but
understanding it less than theyever did. And there's, it's,
it's an interesting paradoxbecause they're , they keep
pulling in new systems, butthey profess we don't know how
(31:14):
to use them. Mm-Hmm.
, right? Andthat's, that's interesting
because we need to make , we astechnology providers to legal
services need to make it easyand easy to understand. And
trying to redesign workflowdoesn't help taking their
workflow and digitizing it sothat it looks and feels exactly
like what they do on theirdesk, but it's now on a screen
(31:34):
and it's connected and you haveall the data on the back end of
it. Wow. Right? Mm-Hmm.
that is veryappealing. The notion one , one
of the mediators I spoke withrecently, she said, my , uh, I
need to get my ducks in a row.
My stuff is all over the place.
Can you help me? And she tookone look at our system and said
, oh my God, everything canjust fit right in here and I
(31:54):
can have one screen to go to tosee the status of everything. I
know what my filing dates are,I know what, which letter went
out when I know what myupcoming sessions are all gonna
be about in one place. Mm-Hmm .
And so for her , this was like,I don't have to ask three
people and go to threedifferent apps. I can go to one
URL one interface and boom,it's there.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
Well, I mean I , I , I think that that is altogether
amazing because, you know,yesterday I sat on Zoom and I'm
on Zoom all day for the mostpart, and I could not find
something like I couldn't findsomething. I was like, oh my
god. And you know, I'm , youknow, you're , you're looking
around, let me find this, lemmefind this. And it's seconds,
(32:35):
you know, maybe it was fiveseconds, maybe it's 10 seconds.
And you know, having done a lotof trials by Zoom or some sort
of web related , uh, conceptfive seconds is like an hour.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
So everybody's just sitting there and I think that
a more u you know, like a moreeasy interface is way better.
Way better. Okay. So how dopeople , uh, we've given some
information of how they canreach out to you. Should they
make like an appointment to seethis? Um, should they already
be heavily into mediationbefore they talk to you? Or
(33:15):
what do
Speaker 2 (33:15):
Think, you know, what they're , they're best bet
, bet would be to visit thewebsite and click on the free
trial button. Um , and they'llbe contacted by someone from a
mediation. We'll walk themthrough what that looks like.
Um, they can see very easily ,uh, you know, how it can add
value to their practice.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
Well this is great.
I think it's really helpful andI think that it, it needs to
have a process if you're gonnabe in mediation. Um, I really
kind of wanna get into thebigger mediation. I don't know,
you're kind of getting meinterested so I might have to
take a look at this too. But
Speaker 2 (33:47):
Yeah , the financial piece, all you need now are the
clients and all of them willhave financial issues.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
There you go. Well thank you Joseph. We appreciate
you and we'll probably have youback 'cause maybe we do need to
talk about ai. Everybody lovesit, right?
Speaker 2 (34:00):
Well let's put it this way, it's being talked
about to death .
Speaker 1 (34:04):
That's true.
, maybe we could just figure
out how to use it for good.
Speaker 2 (34:09):
Well that would be helpful because Elon Musk and
the creator of chat GPT arewarning us even building
warning us . So I kind of feellike, you know, let's all take
another look at , uh,Terminator just once again,
just, you know, for andgiggles.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
Well, we appreciate you and uh , hopefully we will
see you again soon.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
I look forward to it . Thanks for having me.
Hi, welcome to mediator podcast.com, a podcast
and video series aboutmediation, negotiation, and
collaboration. My name isMelissa Greg , and I'm a
valuation expert and financialmediator in St. Louis,
Missouri. Today we're gonnatalk about mediation with
Joseph Panetta from inMediation. It's a holistic
(00:20):
legal dispute resolutionplatform that kind of puts a
lot of things together,processes, apps into one
interface. And today we'reactually gonna talk about the
rapid rise of mediation and howwe create an efficient dispute
resolution system. Um, andwelcome. How are you?
Speaker 2 (00:43):
It's so great to be here, Melissa. Thanks for
having me.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
So we might have some comical relief during this
process because you know, it ,it is late on an afternoon and,
you know, we're, we're funindividuals, but this is a
topic that is a little near anddear to my heart, and obviously
to yours. Um, but most peopledon't. Totally. They're like,
are you talking about mediationor meditation or what is this?
(01:11):
So maybe we should just startoff with explaining to people
why we are passionate aboutthis and why the majority of
businesses and individuals andsuch will likely be using
mediation , um, when they havesome issues with other people
and other entities. But tell usabout how people are using medi
(01:34):
meditation. No mediationworldwide
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Exactly. And you know, we're, this is an
exciting time to be inmediation because it is growing
globally at a very fast pace.
And, you know, we can talkabout that sort of locally and
globally. So let's, let's sortof unpack it a bit. The
European Union mediation is nowrequired in all intellectual
property disputes. The Dutchcourts are looking at off
(02:04):
shouldering court cases intomediation first as a means of
increasing their disposal ratein Dubai, all disputes that is
both corporate and personalmust go through mediation
first. That's a recent law.
Egypt, all of , uh, the familyand economic cases have to go
through mediation first, provethat they have made a valiant
(02:26):
attempt at mediation before itactually gets in front of the
bench. The law in New Zealandforbids banks from foreclosing
on small farm loans, so theycan't litigate them into
foreclosure. They must mediatethem as a form of dispute
resolution if the farm is , uh,delinquent on its loan
payments. And then finally, youlook at something like equine,
(02:47):
which is a new mediationclient. It's a French
institution that's , uh, that'scomprised of former c-suite
officers. And these gentlemenand ladies step into complex
cross-border disputes, wherethe value of the relationship
between the parties over thelong term is actually greater
than the issue at hand. Now,that gives you a sense of sort
(03:10):
of like the broad scope globaluptick in the use of mediation
as a dispute resolutionmechanism. Let's take a look at
the US for a second. New Yorkis focused on what , what they
call presumptive ADR. This hasbeen floating around now for
several months, and there ispretty much widespread
understanding it's going topass. That means every single
(03:33):
dispute must go to mediationbefore it gets to a bench.
Every , there are no, there'sno sort of threshold for that,
which is very interesting. Andas you and I can both
appreciate when you are a largestate with a large court system
like New York, when it happensthere, it sort of sends a, a
ripple through the , the other49 states , Florida,
(03:56):
California, Texas, all verylarge states with very large
court systems. They all havesome form of ADR workflow,
right? So there's this workflowthat's, that is disburdening
the court system of theseinitial hearings and cases
through mediation. So ourmessage to mediators is, get
ready, because with thisincreased push to mediation,
(04:21):
your skills are going to beneeded and required. So you
need, if you're not ready, youneed to get ready to get ready.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
I think that's a great point, Joseph. Part of it
is also from a businessstandpoint, what we have been
finding is contractually, youknow, just think of any time
you sign an agreement to dosomething with another company,
there's usually an arbitrationclause that says at least you
(04:48):
need to go outside of thecourt. But for the most part,
arbitration is very similar tocourt. So people are actually
going to mediation to kind ofdo an alternate dispute
resolution option, but not bein that more formalized , um,
arbitration. So I think thatthere's, it's sort of like
(05:11):
mediation might be an optionfor really, and , and what you
have talked about in a lot ofcontexts previously to this is
that it's a relationship. So ifa company's fighting another
company and they have alongstanding relationship going
into court for one littleissue, when they're gonna
(05:33):
continue, that relationship isactually counterproductive. But
there's a lot of otherindicators of like, that
mediation is gaining afoothold. Maybe you can tell us
a little bit more, becauseagain, I think that this is a
very exciting space for allfinancial people, not just
(05:53):
evaluators, but anybody withfinance in their background or
law in their background. Right?
Speaker 2 (06:01):
100%. And I think, you know, what, what we're
talking about now is therelationship that people have
when they go into a dispute,particularly a corporate
dispute or a personal dispute.
One where there's, you know,whether it's a low value or
high values in material isabout the relationship. And now
it has hit a dispute moment.
The issue with arbitration,much like court, is that it
(06:23):
sets up an adversarial process.
Mediation by its very nature isa collaborative process. And so
I think that differentiatorright there, it's, it's an
assisted collaborative process,but that makes it a very
different approach fromarbitration. And, you know,
from when you consider some ofthe other indicators that are
pushing mediation forward,there's the Singapore
(06:44):
Convention, which is formediation, what the New York
Convention was for arbitration,which you mentioned earlier.
The New York Convention, Ibelieve was signed in 1950, and
it was ratified by countriesall over the world. And it
ensured enforcement of arbitralawards. Well , the Singapore
Convention does the same thingfor mediated settlements. And
there are now more than 55countries that have signed the
(07:05):
Singapore Convention, thelatest of which was the uk. And
what that means is if you havea settlement agreement between
two companies, that might , onemight be in , uh, you know,
Egypt and the other one mightbe in France, but your
agreement can be enforced inthe uk, it can be enforced in
Singapore, it can be enforcedin any of the 55 countries that
have signed that agreement. Andwhat it does, I think for the
(07:29):
listeners, your listenersspecifically this audience, is
that it gives them peace ofmind that the negotiated
settlement that they've helpedto arrive to will be upheld in
all of these jurisdictions.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
Yeah. I I think that some of the, you know, dispute
resolution in a mediation or anarbitration has been around for
a significant amount of time.
So this isn't a new concept,but quite frankly, it has been
underutilized. And so I thinkthat a lot of people have kind
(08:02):
of waited around wells tell mehow to deal with this in my own
space. Right? And what I'mseeing is that you really have
to be kind of a pioneer in thisspace and say, okay, because I
do mediation more specificallyfor divorce and partner
disputes, right? They're verydifferent than corporate
(08:23):
disputes, you know. So is theremore a driving push for
mediation in the, the moreprivate sector or the public
sector? Or does it even matter?
Speaker 2 (08:37):
I don't think there's a different , a line of
differentiation between thetwo. I think historically,
you're right, mediation in theUnited States was looked at as
the domain of like familycourt, divorce, court
settlements, those kinds ofthings. And, you know,
historically, for good reason,it was about a relationship
that needed the two people tocome together. And it doesn't,
it , it's not a win-losescenario. Mm-Hmm.
(08:58):
, right? It's more of a how dowe get to a comfortable
conclusion for everyone. Butthere was a , an interesting
article that ran in theGuardian , uh, last October,
and it said that the pandemicadded six years to the backlog.
Mm-Hmm . Of courts six years.
That is a very long time towait to get in front of a
neutral. Most parties, itdoesn't matter what kind of
(09:21):
dispute you're in a good 90plus percent of the time. One
thing that both parties in thedispute have in common is they
want to get it over with soonerrather than later, right?
Mm-Hmm.
things more than they want toget it over with, which stands
in the way of the speed. But ata minimum, getting the process
started is what we think of it, of ADR as appropriate dispute
(09:43):
resolution. So you havemediation, you have
arbitration, you havelitigation, of course you have
negotiation, but in there youhave a Penelope of opportunity
to arrive at a conclusion. Theproblem is you can't get
started as fast in arbitrationor in litigation as you can
with mediation. Mm-Hmm.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
process and having, you know,like it's, it , it's a classic
situation, but we, we had thatin litigation that if you
become an expert, it's like,how do you get your first case?
Well, you need to testify toget your first case. And you're
like, well, I need to testifyto get, you know, like it's a
(10:24):
chicken and the egg. But it'sthe same with mediation, you
know? So there, there areopportunities that you can get
in groups and, and get trainedand, you know, partner with
different types of people. Butrealistically, you still gotta
figure out like where you fitand, and what your process is
(10:44):
and how you are going toutilize structures. 'cause it ,
in a lot of mediation, you arethe one, right? Like, there's
not somebody else to look overand be like, Hey, what would
you,
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Oh,
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Oh yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm the person. But a lot of
times when people are cominginto meeting , 'cause we, we
can get into the back end ofwhat mediation looks like, but
for people, right. What isappealing about mediation in
general? Like, why wouldsomebody choose to go this
(11:16):
route when it's a little bit ofan unknown or you don't know
the players, you know, like,why do we care?
Speaker 2 (11:25):
I would sum up the most appealing factors for
mediation in sort of four bigbuckets. And the first is
creativity. Um, Recently Iwrote an article for , uh,
Bloomberg Law about how AI maybe helping the legal profession
in a lot of ways, but it couldnever replace the human element
of mediation ever. Mm-Hmm .
(11:46):
heard recently. Mediatorrecounted this , uh, mediation.
She was holding between , uh,co-leaders of a company. It got
to a point where they needed toseparate. And it was a years
long mediation. It took a very,very long time. It was a lot to
unpack. And they finally getdown to the very last point.
And the amount of money isnegligible in the scope of the
much larger, you know, fundsthat they were dealing with.
(12:08):
But they would not budge.
Neither party would finallygotten to the point where it
was basta we're done. And sothe mediator very cleverly,
creatively came up with thissolution. It's a nominal amount
of money. Why don't each of yousplit the money in half and
donate to charity in the nameof the other party? Boom, it
was done because now it was nolonger a payment to the other
(12:31):
side. It was a charitablecontribution and it got over
that last hump. And that is thekind of thing for me, where
arbitration and litigation havevery black and white outcomes.
It's very win-lose, as youmentioned earlier, mediation
can be creative in itsoutcomes. Like they don't have
to be so black and white. Andthat's one of the things I love
the most. And the second wouldbe nuance. You know, just
(12:51):
mentioning ai, how manydifferent ways can you say the
words? Oh, really? Oh, really?
Oh really? Oh, really? There isdisbelief. There's, in
incredulity there's, you know,new awareness and AI can only
understand one version. Thewritten version, the tone with
(13:11):
which you say it conveyseverything. That's why the
human element cannot, thatnuance right there, that
understanding of the, theethical and canon components,
you can't remove that. Probablythe third biggest tent pole in
one of the ones that yourclients I think would really
appreciate and thatcorporations really go for is
confidentiality. Why do youthink the Fox News Dominion
(13:34):
voting machine scandal on thesteps of the courtroom was
mediated into a settlement?
Because, probably becauseRupert Murdoch didn't want all
of those text messages floatingaround in the public eye.
Because once it's public in alitigation form , it is public,
public, then you can see all ofthe dirty laundry from both
(13:54):
sides. And so mediation offeredthem a chance to do this
confidentially. What's greatabout that, if you're a
corporation, a mediated termsof a mediated settlement don't
have to be disclosed oractually cannot be disclosed in
any shareholder filings or SECfilings or anything like that.
Merely the fact that there is asettlement may not even be
reportable. So confidentialityrange supreme, this is why
(14:15):
mediation and corporatedisputes is getting larger and
larger. And finally, it's whatwe said earlier, speed. It's
about, it's about getting tothe process so that you can
move on from it. So it'screativity, nuance,
confidentiality, and speed.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
So I wanna go back to creativity because I really
like this one and I think thatit's a little bit lost because
we're legal people, we'refinancial people and you know ,
um, we do things likespecifically right by the
numbers, by check the boxes anddo all that. I've seen some of
the best mediators haveexperience or you know , like
(14:53):
the level of experience is ofcourse important. But if you
know the area that you aremediating in immaculately,
right? You have seen so manycombinations of how a deal has
been structured or settled thatyou sort of have this entire
(15:13):
bank of ideas, right? But thatis an active process of
collecting how you can becreative. And it just, a lot of
it's , um, you know, 'causethe, the story that you gave,
basically the, the remainingfinancial issue wasn't a
financial issue. It was apersonal issue. And people are,
(15:36):
you know, like financial peopleand , um, lawyers don't always
wanna get in the mud when ithas to do with an interpersonal
relationship issue. Right? Sotalk more about like, how we
come in. 'cause a little bit ofthe ai, 'cause we had talked
about ai, right? And we hadtalked about mediation is a
(15:59):
very interesting space becauseyou still have to show up and
you have to like, activelycoordinate a settlement of an
unknown. It's literally anunknown. Like you don't know
how it's gonna end and you hopeit ends well, but you don't
know. Talk more a little bitabout, you know, what goes into
some of that creativity. Isthat just some of the resources
(16:22):
that you're using? You know,'cause we're gonna shortly get
into kind of what you do andhow we combine all of this.
But, you know, start to talkhow you build a practice in
this space.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
I think it boils down to you , you know what,
you know, so you become a bitof a subject matter expert to ,
to your point earlier, like you, you need to have a grounding
in one or more particularareas. They're in areas that
you studied, areas that , thatare interesting to you. But you
need to have some understandingto understand the jargon, to
understand sort of like where,where people are coming from.
(17:00):
There's an enormouspsychological piece to this in
the, in the story that Irelated earlier. You're
absolutely right, the mediatordiscovered that the issue was
not a financial issue. It was afinancial issue masquerading ,
um, over a personal, sort ofstuck in the crawl , right?
Mm-Hmm.
(17:20):
what's as the French say?
What's
that's driving you to thissticky point? Mm-Hmm.
Like, is this really about themoney? Because if it's really
about the money, then thisseems like the most logical
solution. It's the cool, calmvoice. It is the logic, right?
(17:41):
And you really can't combat anemotional argument with logic,
but you can use logic to fueland redirect emotionality. And
I think that's what mediaskilled mediators do very well.
They diffuse the emotionalityby, by directing it in a
different way, in a differentdirection. And I think that's,
that's a true skill in terms ofbuilding you need, you need
(18:03):
testimonials, but it's hard todo because you've done
settlements for people that areconfidential. Mm . But you can
use stats, facts and figures.
You can use genres and buckets.
Um, you can actually usetestimonials from people that
are just a party that aren't,they're not named, they're not
identifiable. The testimonialcan't be this person conducted
an X for me. Mm-hmm.
(18:24):
this is what I felt about it.
Those kinds of things. And Ithink those are people in a
business context specificallyrecommendations from people
like me, other executives,people in my genre, people in
my cohort. Thoserecommendations go much
further. I don't even need todo that much vetting to pick up
the phone and say, so-and-sotold me I should call you.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
Mm-Hmm.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Those referrals and recommendations I think about
word of mouth is that it's hardto control. So we , we'll get
into it in a moment. Um, howmediators can better prepare,
you know, for, for this kind oflike increase and how they can
ready themselves. But I thinkthat's part of the conversation
we want to conclude with, is toleave the audience with some
tips.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
Well, and I think that that is one of the, the
bigger issues is like, youknow, we're professionals that
have been doing this work for along time, doing this work in a
mediation setting becausethere's benefits to having
skilled financial people in themediation setting, right?
There's actually so many skillsyou need to be a successful
(19:29):
mediator. It's kind ofridiculous. Um, and a lot of
them are not necessarily hardeducation, right? It's
interpersonal skills. It'sbeing able to sense when
somebody is not speaking. It's,you know, I love Chris Voss and
his negotiation. He's AFBInegotiator because I was like,
(19:50):
oh my gosh, you know, and , andhe even said something, it's
like every day there are thesenuances of what you can say.
You know, somebody says, oh, Ireally hate that person. You're
like, you know, you must have areally good reason for that.
And then they start, I do, letme tell you what the reason is.
It's very simple communicationthings that you can do to
(20:14):
manage the room. But if youdon't even know where to get
started, I would say if youhave a knowledge base, you
probably have the capability ofbeing a mediator. If you wanna
deal with people, if you don'twanna deal with people, it's
online. So, I mean, you know,for the most part, but let's
(20:37):
talk a little bit about how youcan get prepared. Because if
you're still doing tax returnsor if you're still doing, you
know , traditional financialand accounting work, this is an
opportunity to get ahead of thegame, in my opinion.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Absolutely.
Absolutely. Especially if youhave that kind of financial
education and underpinning ,um, to get into the corporate
dispute arena makes a hell of alot of sense because you
already have, what, what is,what is an organization going
to need to mediate as acorporation? It's almost always
gonna come down to money. Someform , whether it's accounting
or a financial transaction or avendor relationship or
(21:15):
something like that. But froma, from a preparation
standpoint, if you are a solemediator or you belong in the ,
in the dispute resolutioncenter, you have to increase
awareness. Not just, this goesback to what you were saying
earlier, not just about you asa mediator, but what mediation
can do for you. Fill in theblank audience, right? Mm-Hmm.
(21:36):
that can be local courts or lawfirms that can provide you with
, uh, you know, passive revenuestreams. Active revenue comes
from driving awareness abouthow mediation can be effective
to the various audiences youwish to serve. And then you
have to differentiate yourselfbecause you are not alone, even
though you will be a rare birdin the , um, you know, coming
weeks and months as all of thissort of mediation, froth begins
(21:59):
to steam up. Most of the solopractitioners who sign up for a
mediation want to givethemselves a competitive
advantage. They're looking forsomething that po that
positions them as ahead of thepack or at the forefront of the
technological innovation sothat it ticks a box in many of
their clients' minds that,okay, this person's on the
(22:21):
cutting edge. Then I think, youknow, to your point about it's
online, you have to be able todo both remote and hybrid. Um,
and I went to the InternationalMediation Summit in Salzburg,
Austria earlier this year. Andone of the mediators there is a
former gc. She mediates , um,complex , uh, workplace
disputes. And she hated thepandemic 'cause she hated doing
(22:42):
these things on Zoom. But ifyou are a mediator and you're
doing a corporate dispute andthe corporation happens to be
in another state and the CEO orthe CFO or the COO needs to be
present, pulling them out oftheir role for a few days or a
week or whatever is actuallymore deleterious to the
(23:04):
business than them joining thismediation, offering them the
option to connect in a remotebut secure way that maintains
the confidentiality, thatmaintains the privilege, right?
That actually adds to yourdifferentiation. I can do this
with you in a hybrid way. Thatis a huge plus. And finally,
it's about security. Because ifthe confidentiality is in any
(23:28):
way, shape, or form breached,you're sunk. So you need to
choose a tech partner that hasbest in class security. Our
system has 43 different modulesand they can be custom
configured in any way. You needchoose two, choose three,
choose 20, whatever it is, andthen it's white labeled so that
it looks and feels like yourbrand. And that's how your
(23:49):
clients interface and interactwith you. And I think what
what's important about that iswhen you have a system that has
unparalleled security that wasbuilt from the ground up
specifically for mediation,literally like it was created ,
it wasn't technology that'sbeing retrofitted for this use,
it was built specifically foryou. So bespoke built , purpose
built in legal, that's hard tofind. Mm-Hmm,
(24:11):
Mm-Hmm
technology that Oh yeah, we cando that too. No, no, you can't.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
Yeah. And I, I posted the website below, but
why don't we talk a little bitabout that? Because I think
that mediation is a little bitof the wild west right now. And
I think that if you need ananchor or you need a guidepost,
right, you need to startreaching out that things, not
just training, but liketechnologically how you're
(24:40):
going to stay up on things.
Because for the most part, if,if it, if you're mediating
between more than two people,you, you, you now have to have
the space. You have to havemultiple conference rooms to
separate people out in you.
'cause you might caucus, youknow, you need , uh, snacks,
(25:01):
you need drinks, you needparking, you need , um, staff
to help. If I have a mediationwith six people and I do it
online, for the most part, I'mhandling that internally in
some capacity. Right? But tellus more about the resource that
you actually have that couldreally help us and tell people
(25:25):
if you're gonna give them likea , a , a tutorial or something
if they call you
Speaker 2 (25:29):
Always. We , we , we have a white glove service and
we have sort of 24 7 customersupport. So that's, that's not
even a question , but the truthis, our goal is not to redesign
a mediator's process, right?
Not by any stretch of theimagination. Our goal is to
digitize the process theyalready use. So we are happy to
API into your accountingsystem, your case management,
(25:51):
whatever it is, to offer you asingle pane of glass to do
exactly what you do with paperand 12 different apps between
WhatsApp and, you know, other ,other video platforms and
whatnot. We collapse all ofthat into one screen so that
from, from literally inceptionto settlement, you can see
every stage in betweentemplated , um, you know,
(26:11):
letters and , and outboundemails, what you just
described, having six people inseparate rooms and all that.
You actually can do everysingle one of those things on
one screen, on the screen infront of you with the six
people. You can mute people,you can turn off their camera,
you can let them go off intotheir party rooms by
themselves. You can knock onthe door and ask them if
they're ready to come back into caucus. So there's even the
(26:33):
ability to upload settlementagreements and have a pass the
pen function so everyone canfeel like they get a chance to
weigh in they off , they havesome kind of , um, um, control
over the outcome, which is, youknow, in a mediation scenario,
very important that people feelthat they got to put their
thumbprint on that settlementagreement in a real way. Mm-Hmm
.
(26:55):
in the agreement and they kindof go back and forth, there's a
whole sense of participation.
And then finally we have aDocuSign integration. So by the
time people leave thisplatform, they can have signed
the settlement agreement andit's done. There's no more
banting back and forth afteryou've left the room. It's done
while you're on the screen.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
And like literally if people don't know this, it
could take forever to just, ifyou leave that room and you
don't have anything signed,that could take just as long
that you got to that agreement,right? Because everybody's
going back and re-trading andrenegotiating and things like
that in the background. Um,what you said was really
(27:37):
interesting because I thinkthat for a lot of mediators,
when they get involved withmediation, they're like, zoom
becomes their best friend. Andeven the court system has
realized, you know, the , um, Iguess the, the security issues
with some of the onlineplatforms and have created
their own platforms. Now,mediation is a way that you can
(28:00):
do the same work that you woulddo in litigation but not have
to testify, which is also supercool. But if you think that
you're going to start mediatingwith like an Apple or a
Southwest Airlines or somelarge company and not have a,
and be like, Hey, join my Zoommeeting,
Speaker 2 (28:21):
Their gen , their general counsel is going to
scream bloody murder, don't doit. And it's actually already
happening. Baker McKenzie's anenormous, it's one of the
world's largest law firms, oneof their three main practice
areas is dispute resolution.
Their GC has been screaming atthe entire team globally, stop
uploading documents into Zoom.
It's not safe. Understand thatZoom recently put out , um, an
(28:41):
update to its terms of service,which says if your face appears
on Zoom, it goes to train RAI .
If you upload a document intoZoom, it goes to train our ai .
If you record a transcript onZoom, it goes to train our AI
without user consent. And weare sitting on the other side
of it going, okay, I understandwhy you might want to train
(29:04):
your ai, but without userconsent and in a legal text ,
uh, legal context, could thatpotentially mean there's a
third party in the room? Likewhat ? So that, and we've asked
that question and the standardresponse is , that's a good
question. Which of course meansthey don't have an answer.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
Yeah. So that's, that's a little bit jarring for
us. That's why we're, we, werevery happy to have literally
built our video platform fromthe ground up. It is neither
Zoom nor teams. It isaltogether something that's
bespoke built it . One of themost interesting reactions we
get from mediators and, and uh, folks in , on the legal side
when they see the platform isthey constantly talk about how
(29:42):
well thought through it isbecause it was created by a
mediator, an arbitrator, and alitigator. It was created by
somebody who sits in that seatand understands those
challenges. So you cannotaccidentally put someone in the
wrong breakout room. A personcannot see something that
they're not meant to see aphotograph, a piece of
evidence, whatever. It's notpossible on our platform. And I
(30:04):
say that hand on heart becauseI, I do know, I've , I've
spoken with judges and they useshare file and Dropbox links
and things like that. And yes,they've had the Alex Jones
moment where they'veaccidentally given the wrong
link to one side and those areall actually potentially
appealable issues.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I think that part of what
you're also talking about iseven being connected to you or
utilizing, you know, yourplatform, it , you're kind of
keeping people in compliance,right? Like you're kind of
doing the research of what youneed to be doing and make sure
you check that box and whatabout this and did you finish
(30:41):
the , you know, so I meanthat's a lot of compliance to
make sure you know, thatgetting to the settlement is a
hard process, but thenfinalizing it
Speaker 2 (30:52):
Can even be harder .
And you mentioned somethingearlier that um, actually
there's a stat for , uh,Bloomberg did a stu a survey at
the end of last year andpublished it in January that
showed that lawyers are usingmore tech than ever before, but
understanding it less than theyever did. And there's, it's,
it's an interesting paradoxbecause they're , they keep
pulling in new systems, butthey profess we don't know how
(31:14):
to use them. Mm-Hmm.
because we need to make , we astechnology providers to legal
services need to make it easyand easy to understand. And
trying to redesign workflowdoesn't help taking their
workflow and digitizing it sothat it looks and feels exactly
like what they do on theirdesk, but it's now on a screen
(31:34):
and it's connected and you haveall the data on the back end of
it. Wow. Right? Mm-Hmm.
of the mediators I spoke withrecently, she said, my , uh, I
need to get my ducks in a row.
My stuff is all over the place.
Can you help me? And she tookone look at our system and said
, oh my God, everything canjust fit right in here and I
(31:54):
can have one screen to go to tosee the status of everything. I
know what my filing dates are,I know what, which letter went
out when I know what myupcoming sessions are all gonna
be about in one place. Mm-Hmm .
And so for her , this was like,I don't have to ask three
people and go to threedifferent apps. I can go to one
URL one interface and boom,it's there.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
Well, I mean I , I , I think that that is altogether
amazing because, you know,yesterday I sat on Zoom and I'm
on Zoom all day for the mostpart, and I could not find
something like I couldn't findsomething. I was like, oh my
god. And you know, I'm , youknow, you're , you're looking
around, let me find this, lemmefind this. And it's seconds,
(32:35):
you know, maybe it was fiveseconds, maybe it's 10 seconds.
And you know, having done a lotof trials by Zoom or some sort
of web related , uh, conceptfive seconds is like an hour.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
So everybody's just sitting there and I think that
a more u you know, like a moreeasy interface is way better.
Way better. Okay. So how dopeople , uh, we've given some
information of how they canreach out to you. Should they
make like an appointment to seethis? Um, should they already
be heavily into mediationbefore they talk to you? Or
(33:15):
what do
Speaker 2 (33:15):
Think, you know, what they're , they're best bet
, bet would be to visit thewebsite and click on the free
trial button. Um , and they'llbe contacted by someone from a
mediation. We'll walk themthrough what that looks like.
Um, they can see very easily ,uh, you know, how it can add
value to their practice.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
Well this is great.
I think it's really helpful andI think that it, it needs to
have a process if you're gonnabe in mediation. Um, I really
kind of wanna get into thebigger mediation. I don't know,
you're kind of getting meinterested so I might have to
take a look at this too. But
Speaker 2 (33:47):
Yeah , the financial piece, all you need now are the
clients and all of them willhave financial issues.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
There you go. Well thank you Joseph. We appreciate
you and we'll probably have youback 'cause maybe we do need to
talk about ai. Everybody lovesit, right?
Speaker 2 (34:00):
Well let's put it this way, it's being talked
about to death
Speaker 1 (34:04):
That's true.
out how to use it for good.
Speaker 2 (34:09):
Well that would be helpful because Elon Musk and
the creator of chat GPT arewarning us even building
warning us . So I kind of feellike, you know, let's all take
another look at , uh,Terminator just once again,
just, you know, for andgiggles.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
Well, we appreciate you and uh , hopefully we will
see you again soon.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
I look forward to it . Thanks for having me.
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