Bexar County courts require mediation in almost all cases prior to trial. Mediation is an effort to settle a case through the use of a third party neutral whom tries to help find a resolution. Brian Steward is one of San Antonio's finest mediators and he answers questions.

Transcript:

Justin Hill: Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill law firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real and these are the cases we handle on a day to day basis.

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Justin Hill: All right, welcome to this episode of Hill Law Firm Cases. We're here talking with Brian Steward. Brian Steward is a San Antonio personal injury lawyer. He's been doing it a little bit longer than I have. He's got a few more gray hairs than I have. He also has recently started mediating. I wanted to get him on, talk a little bit about what is mediation. This is really a podcast for clients and people that are trying to learn about the process.

I want to start first is, what did you think about mediation and what was your way of explaining it to your clients prior to going through mediation training and becoming a professional mediator?

Brian Steward: Sure. Mediation is an interesting process. It began in Bexar County in 1992 when Judge Charlie Gonzalez says, "We're going to start employing mediation." I had absolutely no idea what it meant and I've come to love it. Mediation to me as a lawyer and to my clients means, we have an opportunity to sit down with a third party, an impartial third party, listen to the evidence, listen to our case and try to resolve it. The mediator is not going to fix your case. He's not going to decide your case. The mediator is going to listen to your case and make some suggestions.

The mediator is also going to go into the other room where the defendants are, listen to them, and also make suggestions to them. By that, I mean, the mediator has more information than even your lawyer does during that mediation process. If you trust the process and you trust that mediator, sometimes you'll be able to get cases resolved. This is an opportunity.

Mediation is an opportunity for plaintiffs, normal people to get the benefit of the mediator's knowledge on this case in the context of these county cases going on in this county in trials that are being tried currently on issues that will face you in juries that will decide your case.

Justin Hill: I'll just be candid. I have a problem with mediation, in that, I feel too often than not the other side is showing up trying to buy a case for cheap or settle a case for cheap as opposed to evaluating risk and actually trying to resolve the case. I always tell my clients, "Look, our goal of mediation--" My question for you is going to be, what has your goal of mediation been for your own clients?

Because what I tell my clients, "My goal in mediation is, let's figure out how much they have brought today to settle your claim and let's get them to offer the maximum amount that they have to settle your claim. Then you can make an informed decision on whether or not that is sufficient."

That's always been my goal. That's always been my plan. I've never seen mediation as the sole goal of settling the case because I don't want to lean on my client or tell them, "Hey, you need to settle the case." I want to know how much did they bring to settle your case so the client can then make a decision.

Has that been what you've told your clients in the past or how have you, as a practicing lawyer, gone about explaining the goal to your clients?

Brian: There are two things that you bring up that are important. The first issue and the first focus is, I want to make sure, as...