Process and Outcomes of a Court‐Administered Civil Mediation Program

Abstract

This paper extends the current literature on court‐connected civil mediation programs and provides implications for future research and court administration policy and practice. Using administrative court data, we describe the mediation case processing, explore the factors associated with case participation in mediation, and examine how mediation processes and case characteristics relate to different case outcomes. Our findings indicate that 77.5% of cases assigned to a mediation track resulted in settlement, 17% reached resolution through a judicial ruling, and only 5.5% had trial‐related outcomes. More than two thirds of cases that went through mediation settled after mediation and prior to trial.