Question 1

conflicool: friend or enemy of lawyers?

Accepted Answer

In other words, will conflicool take clients from lawyers? Divert potential clients from their firms?
The honest answer is that this is not the purpose. On the other hand, conflicool will help to reinvent the role of the lawyer in conflict management: from being a litigator, or even a gladiator in some cases, the lawyer who accompanies his client in mediation helps his client negotiate a solution to the dispute by seeking to understand and satisfy the interests of the various parties rather than remaining mired in a war of positions, including that of his client.
The experience that the founders and partners of conflicool have with mediation reveals that :
-	The bonds between lawyers and their clients often emerge stronger from a mediation, even when it does not succeed because the parties and their counsel experience moments of relative serenity compared to a traditional trial. The parties, through their personal involvement in the process, understand the process and appreciate the support of their lawyer;
-	Lawyers - certainly when they have been trained in the interest-based negotiation that is mediation - generally feel that their role is better recognized and more valued than in the trench warfare that can be represented by legal proceedings.

Question 2

Does conflicool harm the financial interests of lawyers?

Accepted Answer

This question is related to the previous one.  
One thing cannot be said and its opposite: while mediation offers in the majority of cases a definitive answer more quickly than a trial in the event of a dispute, such a conflict resolution is obviously, at first sight, not as remunerative for the lawyer as a long trial.

But this question also deserves to be put into perspective:
-	A satisfied customer is a loyal customer who brings in others;
-	Mediation in no way prohibits the negotiation between lawyer and client of a success fee;
-	The conflicool bets that, in addition to the litigants, the actors of justice whose lawyers also benefit from it, in particular by a better balance in their portfolio of activities between litigation and advice or by a better perception of the profession by the general public and the business world. This, sooner or later, will have a positive impact on the profession's revenues.

Question 3

As a lawyer, do you have to register on conflicool?

Accepted Answer

No. conflicool automatically designates a mediator to the parties using the platform. A lawyer could be approached at the suggestion of the mediator who would recommend - as encouraged by conflicool - that a lawyer accompany each party to the mediation depending on the complexity of the case to be resolved and/or the need to have the final agreement drafted by good lawyers.
If the lawyer is also a certified mediator, as a certified mediator, he or she has as much chance - no more and no less - than other mediators to be appointed by conflicool to assist parties in negotiating a solution to their dispute. And there can be little doubt that, in this case, the mediator will also be careful to recommend the intervention of lawyers alongside the parties when he or she deems it advisable.

Dear Lawyers

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