Perhaps you may have only recently heard of mediation and arbitration being used perhaps by one of your favourite sports teams. You see, it’s quite common in that business genre for it to be included as a term of team player contracts.

That is that a player can’t just drag the team he or she is playing for directly into court in the event that they have some type of dispute over their contract. First they have to go through a mediation process and if that doesn’t resolve the issue, only then they can take it before a judge.

The reason for this is two-fold. First, all matters of court are made public, so sports team and players won’t have their grievances tarnishing their public image when they’re mediated. Mediation is done in private, behind closed doors. Secondly, the vast majority of disputes are solved in mediation.

Now TV court dramas are one thing, but the reality of actual court cases is that they can, and do often do drag on for years. In some rare cases, even up to and over a decade. Teams and players just don’t have that kind of time, and money.

If not for attorneys and the fact that they tend to “fan the flames” of disputes for their own financial gain, most civil disputes really can be solved quite quickly. In short, two parties have a disagreement over some money or property of some sort, and all that’s needed in most cases is an expert unbiased opinion, along some cool-headed rational. » Read more: History of Arbitration and Mediation