Hi this is Brian Wiklendt of Schwartz here in Maitland Florida. I just
got back from a trip so instead of boring you with legal details and things
and sitting at a desk I thought I'd take you on a tour of our office so come on
let's let's take a look at the conference room.
So here we are in our conference room. This is our main conference room where
we have clients and the best part about the conference room is that we have this
video capability and it's really nice to video conference with clients through
Skype or any other type of medium and we can see each other on the screens
together. And as an example I just had a telephonic hearing with a client and the
client was in South Carolina and the judge was in Newport News Virginia and I
was here in Orlando Florida and it worked out really well. It was it was
a live type conference situation where people didn't have to travel and they
could see each other in person
eye-to-eye and that's the way I like to do business instead of over the phone
and you know the emails and texts and tweets and all that kind of stuff I I
like to do it the old-fashioned way and see someone that I'm representing to
help them and they can understand see me and Doreen and my staff through video
wherever you are.
We have clients in all round the world Australia Scotland United Kingdom
Germany and so it really works well and this conference room that we can use
this video conferencing equipment that we have. In this particular room we
usually do depositions normally. It's a formalized type setting so that there's
room for people to move around and what deposition would be live testimony that
would be given by either by a treating physician a doctor, your doctor or to show
that your injury was related to your employment or maybe you. We would like to
have it in friendly confines so that we can prepare each other for the
deposition and take it for go for it and have it in a comfortable place
like this. We also have another conference room that I will be showing
you now.
So now we're here in our smaller conference room and what we usually usually use this room
for is for mediations. We have mediations where there's a neutral mediator that's
here at the office and we also have the insurance company and the
representative and their their counsel present. A mediation which is a meeting
of the minds to determine whether or not we can settle the case out right and let
everyone go their separate ways sometimes they work and sometimes they
don't most of the time they do when the time is right then it seems like both
sides wanna try to negotiate we have a mediation. And what a mediation is is we
we meet in the bigger conference room together everybody's together. We give
our position statement to the mediator and the mediator makes a little statement about
himself and that we're reporting reporting that whether or not we settle
the case and nothing else everything else is confidential to the to the
federal judge. Then after we break during that first session we come in here and
we hang out in the smaller conference room. And the mediator goes back in forth. And
what the mediator does is basically we tell him what we want him to say in terms
of our position on one side or the other. And sometimes we give him confidential
information that we don't want him to share quite yet because we're getting
ready for a trial. So we he goes back and forth back and forth for
however long it takes.
I've actually had a mediation that lasted more than four days straight. You
know thirty two straight hours of mediation going back and forth. A lot of
most of the time it you know when we can we cut to the chase because we all know
each other in this little area of law that cut to the chase after about four hours
or so and figure out whether or not we're gonna be in a range of the
settlement that's that's good for both sides. If we don't then we go to trial.
But this is a nice arena for us to go back and forth and be quiet
and its confidential anything that we say during mediations are confidential so
that's what the law is and that's what we do and we probably have a mediation
and the vast majority of the cases that we that we have just see if we can come
to me and minds with the insurance company or the employer. And like I said
a lot of times it's successful for both sides.
And that's what we try to do here and if we don't then we go to court and let the
judge decide everyone's fate. So this is just a small piece of our office and
what we use these rooms for here at Garfinkel Schwartz in Maitland Florida. And like I said I
mean I've even had mediations in the airport hangar, I've had mediations at Disney
World. You know wherever wherever there's a conference table and two places for
people to meet that's where we where we sometimes have these things.
Hotel rooms you know whatever so I go all across the country into these things.
But this is our home base and you know if if we're we're able to have everyone
come to Florida and meet here then it works really well it's very comfortable for
our clients. So I hope you call if you have some issues or problems or want to know more
about mediations and the settlement process and the Defense Base Act and
things like that we're here on call for free to answer any of your questions that you
may have.
Thank you for your time.