Sometimes parties in a coverage dispute may want to sit down face to face and come to an agreement. Toward that end, the RIMS conference offered a panel presentation by three attorneys and a risk manager who extolled the virtue of mediation.

Giulio Zanolla, an attorney who owns Zanolla Mediation in New York, said the beauty of mediation is the parties involved get to decide exactly what it will involve. They can decide with whom they want to mediate, what issues need to be mediated and how the mediation process should work.

Once a mediation agreement is made and the parties sit down together, it’s important not to focus on numbers right away, said Erin Gleason Alvarez, a mediator with Gleason Alvarez ADR in New York. Initially, a mediation should be about the defining the problem, she said. If an offer is made, the mediator should understand how the offering party how he came up with that number. The mediator’s role is not that of a carrier pigeon who carries offers and counter offers, she said.

When numbers are discussed, a common technique is to use brackets; that is defining a possible settlement by marking the lowest possible amount reasonable to the highest possible reasonable value. But it’s crucial for parties not to decide that the bracket means the other party is willing to settle for the midpoint, both Alvarez and Zanolla said. That can lead to a breakdown in negotiations.

Mediation must be brought to a close. Sometimes the parties may decide to let the mediator settle on a number and agree to accept that decision as binding.

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