Suppose that you are the HR manager for a company. The judge in a current law suit by a former employee has ordered mandatory pre-suit mediation. Your boss is unfamiliar with mediation and she asks you to advise her as to several issues regarding the upcoming mediation. Draft a memo thoroughly discussing, at minimum, the following questions:

1. What are the advantages and disadvantages of mediation? Is it likely to be successful? Is it likely to make the parties more or less hostile toward one another? How do the costs in terms of time and money compare with litigation?
2. If your boss has no interest in mediation, does she really have to be there? Can she send her attorney instead? If so, are there any conflicts of interest with respect to attorney advocate representation of which she should be aware?
3. Must the company actually participate in the mediation? Can your boss (or her attorney) just sit there and refuse to speak?
4. If your boss (or her attorney) does decide to engage in dialogue during the mediation, what are the risks concerning information that might be disclosed? If the mediation fails, can the former employee use such information at trial?

Although this assignment is completed in Week 3, students should refer to information in Lessons 3, 4, and 7 for relevant information.

Submission Instructions:

This assignment should at a minimum contain 1,000 words of content (there are four parts, so this is ~250 words each). Word count does not include headings, cover pages, references, or question text (if you choose to include it in your paper); I am looking for 1,000 words of substance. Your paper should be in APA format including a properly formatted cover page (abstracts are optional) and a reference page with at least three (3) NEW references ("new" here means references that you have not already used in previous assignments in this course). Providing additional references to your assignments demonstrates your desire to conduct additional research on the topic area, and can improve your research skills.

With all assignments, include properly formatted in-text citations within the body of your work for each of your listed references so the reader can ascertain your original thoughts or ideas as well as the portion of your work that is credited to credible sources. It is very important to identify work from other sources to ensure that proper credit is provided to researchers in the field. This assignment uses Turn It In for originality verification.

Submit the weekly written assignment as an MS Word attachment (.doc or .docx format). A recommended font is 12pt Times New Roman. DO NOT include discussion board answers with your formally written assignment submission.

Select the iRubric link to view the rubric for this assignment.