By MATT CHANDLER
mchandler@bizjournals.com | 716-541-1654

With court dockets bursting at the seams and the financial burden of resolving a legal matter in court weighing heavily on all parties, mediation is seen as a growing option for resolving disputes.

Though experts say it's not a model that fits every case, mediation settlement resolutions offer parties the best chance at amicable resolution to disputes ranging from family court cases to small-claims court matters.

Thursday, Oct. 21, is Mediation Settlement Day statewide. Organizers want to raise awareness of the benefits of mediation and increase its use in the state court system.

Bridget O'Connell is mediation manager at Child & Family Services' Center for Resolution & Justice in Buffalo. She is helping to organize events locally and says Mediation Settlement Day started in 2001 in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

"It began as a way to promote healing in New York City," she said. "Since then it has gone statewide and served as an opportunity to promote mediation, alternative dispute resolution and creative problem-solving methods."

O'Connell said the center handles a growing number of mediation cases each year, as more people become aware of the option.

"From May 2009 until month-end April 2010, our Erie County Family Court program mediated and resolved over 300 cases," she said. "Referrals to the program exceeded that number and were either mediated without reaching a final agreement, had parties who failed to appear, chose to withdraw their matter, not utilize mediation or were screened inappropriate for mediation."

Unlike arbitration, mediation is intended to bring both parties in a dispute together to work out a mutually agreeable, non-confrontational agreement to end a legal dispute.

It's "a much more productive way to help people, instead of being a hired gun," said attorney Steven Sugarman, a longtime mediator with Pusatier Sherman Abbott & Sugarman. He also is director of the mediation clinic at the University at Buffalo Law School, where he teaches courses in mediation.

"I started out as a lawyer 20, 25 years ago and it didn't take long before I got burned out as a litigator and I thought, ‘There has got to be a better way.' I think that almost all people who go to law school have that ideal that they want to help people," he said. "But in law school, at least when I was there, people are learning an adversarial model."

Today, Sugarman serves as mediator for a variety of cases and said he loves what he does.

"With mediation, you don't have to represent either party, and that really frees you up as a lawyer to help," he said.

He added that he hopes Mediation Settlement Day opens the eyes of Western New Yorkers who perhaps didn't know that it's a viable option for resolving their legal disputes. Calling it "faster and much less expensive" than a drawn-out court proceeding, Sugarman said in the proper cases, mediation can be a superior approach to resolving issues.

"Judges are good at what they do, but they don't necessarily have the time to craft a solution that is carefully tailored to the problem at hand," he said. "They are also limited by what the law says they can do. Whereas parties, given the tools, can do this well for themselves. And if people are making a fully informed agreement, who am I - or a lawyer or a judge - to tell them they can't bring about their own sense of justice?"