In person, by video call, on the phone, in writing from home: the location of your mediation is largely dependent on the participants preferred method of communication.
Video call is now an extremely popular location for mediation even when the people in dispute live in the same locality. Video calls enable participants to communicate from a place where they are most comfortable. They don’t have to be in the same physical room as each other, and they don’t have to look at each other’s faces or even hear each other’s voices if they don’t want to. Video calls also afford participants and the mediator heightened privacy for break out conversations. They’re often provided to participants for free and avoid the costs of room rentals.
In person mediation often happens in meeting rooms and offices, but our mediators have conducted mediations outside court rooms and even on the street – whatever’s necessary to ensure the participants keep communicating. The ideal situation when having an in-person mediation is to have one room large enough for all participants to sit and talk together, and other often smaller rooms for the participants to have private communications and contemplation time. That’s often inconvenient and cost prohibitive, so we can always make reasonable adjustments to still have an effective mediation.
Telephone mediation has many of the benefits of video calls, but lacks the ability for participants to see each other – which can be helpful to enable empathy and understanding of each other’s position.
Mediation via written correspondence is possible, but is generally extremely time consuming compared to other forms of mediation.