a new mediation tool to settle a dispute more quickly
Mediation is a process often recommended by the courts, allowing litigants to settle their dispute amicably. Marie-Laure Vanlerberghe and Françoise Housty founded “minute! mediation”, an online Toulouse platform that allows everyone to undertake mediation quickly and easily.
How to settle a neighborhood, family or even financial conflict without going through the court box? Mediation, increasingly requested by the courts, and in some cases mandatory, allows litigants to settle a dispute amicably. The Toulouse online platform ” minutes ! mediation”, founded in September 2021 by two mediators, Marie-Laure Vanlerberghe and Françoise Housty, allows everyone, individuals, companies and large accounts, to use it quickly and easily.
“I realized that many litigants did not know who to contact and how to start mediation,” says Marie-Laure Vanlerberghe, former judicial officer. Faced with this observation, the latter had the idea of creating “minute! mediation”, “UN digital tool that canallows you to launch a mediation process in a simple, fast and efficient way”. A project that she decides to concretize by joining forces with Françoise Housty, a lawyer by training and a mediator for 15 years.
Invite both parties to mediation
Once on the “minute! mediation”, users must create an account, indicate their status and fill in their dispute, whether it is, for example, a family dispute linked to a separation or an inheritance, a financial dispute between a landlord and tenant or a conflict between a company and its associates.
Then, the platform offers a quick questionnaire made up of two to three questions, which allow, thanks to an algorithm, to answer the customer’s problem in a synthetic way. The latter is then presented in the form of a letter “of invitation to mediation”, reread by one of the mediators, then sent to the opposing party who has 20 days to accept, refuse, or not respond to the request. This first step represents a cost of 34.80 euros for the applicant.
Quickly get to the heart of the matter
The speed of this process of invitation to mediation is precisely what makes the main asset of this platformelm proposed in Toulouse. Indeed, it allows users to validate this first step in a simple way from home, and therefore, to initiate a mediation process as soon as possible. “Users don’t have to call a mediator, explain the problem to them for an hour or two, and then wait for them to send a letter. It is best to keep this ttime for subsequent meetings between the two parties, where everything happensin a more concrete way,” adds Marie-Laure Vanlerberghe.
Indeed, if the request is accepted by the opposing party, the actors of the conflict then integrate a traditional mediation process. Thus, one of the platform’s mediators plans face-to-face or remote meetings between the people concerned.
Therefore, the mediator, impartial in the conflict, “acts as a trusted third party who respected that the agreement reached between the two parties is balanced, but above all achievable”, indicates Marie-Laure Vanlerberghe. These sessions are invoiced according to a financing contract signed by both parties.
In the event of a refusal, the mediators write a certificate which, subsequently, will allow the applicant to take legal action, while demonstrating that the mediation process has been carried out.
A platform certified by the Ministry of Justice
A few months ago, the Toulouse Court of Appeal was listed as “minute! mediation” in its official list of court of appeal mediators. It is therefore the first online mediation platform in France to benefit from this recognition. As a result, the platform has also received the Certilis label, a mark from the Ministry of Justice guaranteeing the quality of online mediation and conflict resolution services.
Charlotte Benati