Most disputes end in a room, not a courtroom.

A mediation day has a rhythm: position papers and a mediation agreement beforehand, usually a joint opening session, and then the real work in private caucuses — the mediator moving between rooms, testing each side privately and ferrying offers, until the gap closes. The bulk of commercial mediations settle on the day or shortly after.

What separates the parties who settle well from the parties who merely settle is preparation. Knowing the file cold, setting a realistic range before the day, and understanding the other side's pressures turns the caucus conversations from haggling into negotiation. We prepare for mediation the way we prepare for a hearing — because the case that is ready not to settle is the one that settles on the best terms.

The deal becomes binding when it is signed — and the drafting in the room matters. Payment terms, timing, releases, confidentiality and default consequences all belong in the settlement agreement before anyone leaves; the loose "heads of agreement to sort out later" is where mediated deals come apart.

Appointing the right mediator is half the settlement. Brett Harris has been a qualified commercial mediator since 2008 and accepts appointments in commercial disputes — construction, insurance, contract and business breakdowns among them — bringing two decades of litigation judgment to the neutral chair.

The mediator's job is not to decide but to move: managing the day, testing each side's confidence privately against how the case would really run, and finding the deal that is genuinely available. A mediator who has run trials knows which risks are real — and parties hear that credibility in the caucus room.

Nothing said in the mediation can be used later in court, no outcome is imposed, and the parties' litigation rights survive intact if no deal is done. That structure is why parties can afford to be franker in a mediation than in correspondence — and why so many disputes that looked immovable resolve there.

Mediation is not always the right tool. Where one side needs urgent interim relief or a binding public precedent, the courts are the right forum; where the problem is power imbalance, bad faith, or simply the need for a final decision without a public trial, a privately decided outcome is the honest recommendation.

Arbitration under the Arbitration Act 1996 is the heavyweight option: private, with a decision-maker the parties choose, producing an award enforceable like a judgment with very narrow appeal rights. Expert determination is the fast, technical alternative — a subject-matter expert deciding a defined question, common in valuation and rent-review disputes.

Both are usually locked in by contract clauses agreed long before any dispute exists, which is where the real forum decision gets made. A dispute clause drafted with the likely disputes in mind is cheap insurance; inheriting a careless one is costly — we advise on both ends of that problem.