Mediation | Arbitration | Early Neutral Evaluation

Early Neutral Evaluation

Early Neutral Evaluation is similar to mediation and offers a way for parties to avoid the heavy costs of discovery and pretrial litigation once a lawsuit has been filed. In this process, the Evaluator conducts a case evaluation conference early on in the litigation process and, after each party has presented its positions, the Evaluator seeks to narrow the issues in the case and then assesses for each party the relative strengths and weaknesses of their case and risks at trial. Simultaneously the Evaluator will explore early settlement possibilities.  Mediation and Early Neutral Evaluation often overlap in practice.