Here's a full explanation of its advantages. If you've given up on negotiating a settlement of your dispute directly with the other party, mediation may be the most painless and efficient way to solve it. Compared to a lawsuit, mediation is swift, confidential, fair and low cost. In contrast, lawsuits often take many months, or even years, to resolve. This may include family members, co-workers or business partners, your landlord, neighbors or others with whom you have a continuing personal or business relationship.
Lawsuits polarize and ultimately ruin relationships.
A huge advantage of mediation is its ability to get a dispute resolved without destroying a relationship. Another advantage of mediation is confidentiality. By contrast, one of the drawbacks to going to court is that, by and large, everything said or submitted in connection with a lawsuit becomes available to the public. So whether your desire is to protect trade secrets or just to avoid washing your dirty laundry in public, your privacy will be substantially greater with mediation rather than litigation. In addition, mediation will nearly always save you money.