Blog
Can AI help us prepare for a mediation?
Yes, for the parts of preparation that are document work and arithmetic: the offer history, the figures, what each side has actually said. The negotiation itself, and the advice on whether to settle, stay with you.
Alesis · · 5 min read
Yes, for a particular slice of the work. Mediation preparation is mostly document work and arithmetic: pulling the offer history out of eighteen months of correspondence, checking the schedule adds up, knowing exactly where each admission sits in the papers. An AI assistant can do that quickly and show you where it got everything. What it cannot do is judge what your client will accept, read the other side, or advise on whether a number is a good one.
What mediation preparation actually consists of
Strip out the diary management and it comes down to six things:
- Knowing the papers cold, so that when a point is put to you across the table you can place it.
- Knowing what is agreed and what is genuinely in dispute.
- Knowing the numbers: the claim as pleaded, the schedule, any counterclaim, interest, costs incurred and costs to trial.
- Knowing the offer history and what each offer did or did not cover.
- Knowing the client: their commercial priorities, their appetite for risk, what they need beyond money.
- Knowing the legal framework well enough to explain risk in plain terms in a private session.
Items one to four are largely mechanical. Item five is a conversation with your client. Item six is research you would do anyway.
Where AI earns its place
The mechanical items are where an assistant that reads the matter file properly is worth having.
The offer history. Ask for every offer, response and indication in the correspondence, in date order, with the page each came from. Offers made in passing in an email on a Friday afternoon are the ones people forget. A tool that cites pages lets you check each entry in seconds rather than trusting a summary.
The figures. Have the schedule recalculated and the working shown, line by line. Interest calculations are worth doing twice. So is the arithmetic on any composite offer where costs and damages are rolled together. You want to arrive knowing the difference between the parties in cash, not in approximate terms.
The other side's case as they have put it. Not your summary of it, theirs. Ask for their position on each issue, taken from their pleadings, their letters and their witness evidence, with page references. It is a useful corrective. Firms often go into mediation arguing against a version of the opponent's case that the opponent abandoned months ago.
The gaps. Ask what the papers do not establish. If the causation evidence rests on a single letter, or the loss of profit figure has never been supported by accounts, you want to know that before the other side says it out loud.
The framework. If there is a statutory provision or a piece of official guidance that will be argued about, read it at source beforehand. A tool that takes you to the section itself, rather than to a paraphrase, is doing something useful.
What should not be handed over
Settlement value is a judgement. It depends on the tribunal, the evidence you have seen and the evidence you have not, the client's cash position, the cost of another year of litigation and things a client has told you that are not in any document. No tool can weigh that, and you should be suspicious of one that offers to.
The same goes for negotiation strategy: opening position, order of concessions, when to move and by how much. That is experience, and it is the part of the day the client is paying you for.
One more caution. A good summary is not a substitute for reading the key documents yourself. Use the assistant to find the four documents that matter and then read those four documents. Turning up having read only summaries is how a fee earner gets caught out when a paragraph is read aloud and they cannot place it.
Confidentiality and material from the other side
Mediation runs on confidentiality, and much of the material is without prejudice. Two practical points.
First, do not put any of it into a general consumer chatbot. The question is not whether the tool is clever but where the material goes, who can see it and whether it is retained. Use something your firm has assessed, where client material stays separate and is not used to improve a product for anyone else.
Second, be careful with documents received under restrictions, whether from disclosure or from a previous mediation. Loading them into a system is processing them. If the basis on which you hold them is narrow, keep them out.
Inside the firm, access should follow the matter. A colleague who is not on the file does not need to see the position statement because they are senior.
On the day itself
Have the material available in a form you can search while sitting in a side room. Page level citations matter here more than anywhere: when a figure is challenged at four in the afternoon, you want the page number, not a recollection. Anything you intend to say out loud, check against the document first. And record in the attendance note what you relied on, in the same way you would record any other source.
Where Alesis fits
Alesis is an AI assistant for UK law firms, made by L25 Limited, used through the web browser, with one conversation for a matter. It answers questions about a matter from the matter's own papers and names the page each answer came from; if the papers do not say, it says so. It counts key dates and figures with the working shown, each step carrying the rule that allows it, and when it cannot find support for a point it says what is missing instead of guessing. It assists qualified professionals and does not replace them, and it does not provide legal advice.
