action. Still, the parties haven’t lost anything, except small
amounts of time and money, by trying mediation.
I’m an advocate of using mediation to solve many types of disputes. I routinely include a mediation clause in the contracts I write as part of my business, Nolo Press. The reason is simple. Aside from the fact that I can’t afford the time and expense of going to court, I usually don’t want to jeopardize long-term relationships with people I work with over one, or even a series, of disputes. And even when I think a particular person is such an unreconstructible idiot that I will never again risk a close relationship with him, I have been in the book business long enough to know that it’s sufficiently incestuous that I will inevitably cross this person’s
