As of 13 August 2026, AI can only partly decide whether mediation is suitable for a business dispute.

What to actually do

1. Hand it to a person

   The route this page recommends

   Someone with a licence or accountable authority has to sign this before it counts.

2. Use a tool built for this

   Second choice

3. Do it yourself

   The distant third

   A chat interface, chat-fluent skill, and roughly 30 minutes until you can act on the result.

   How to actually do it

   1. Open the contract, relevant terms, pre-action letters, claim documents and key correspondence, and make a dated timeline of what happened.
   2. Gather the amount or remedy sought, the commercial relationship, any deadlines, the people authorised to settle, and the outcome the business needs.
   3. Remove unnecessary personal data and third-party confidential information, then paste the redacted facts and relevant clauses into the prompt.
   4. Ask the model for the structured assessment and provisional label, requiring it to separate supplied facts from assumptions and missing information.
   5. Compare every factual statement and quoted clause in the response against the original documents, correcting any error or omission.
   6. Send the assessment and the underlying documents to a solicitor experienced in commercial disputes, and ask them to check limitation, jurisdiction, procedure, privilege, disclosure and settlement risk before deciding whether to mediate.

   Prompt

   I need decision support on whether mediation is suitable for a UK business dispute. This is not professional advice. Do not make the decision for me, invent facts, state uncertain legal points as settled, or assume that a contract clause is enforceable without seeing it. Separate facts, assumptions, missing information and legal or strategic issues that need a solicitor.
   
   Dispute summary:
   - Parties and their relationship: [describe]
   - Business and sector: [describe]
   - Contract or terms governing the dispute: [paste relevant clauses]
   - What happened, with dates: [paste a factual timeline]
   - Amount or other remedy in dispute: [describe]
   - Current stage, including any claim, pre-action letter, court deadline or arbitration step: [describe]
   - Evidence available: [list or paste]
   - Communications already sent: [paste relevant messages]
   - Commercial relationship and confidentiality concerns: [describe]
   - What I want to achieve: [describe]
   - Constraints on time, cost, cash flow or management attention: [describe]
   - Any safety, fraud, insolvency, abuse of power or urgent injunction concerns: [describe]
   
   Produce:
   1. A neutral summary of the dispute, with each factual statement linked to the information I supplied.
   2. A mediation suitability assessment covering willingness, authority to settle, information needed, relationship value, confidentiality, urgency, cost and time, enforceability of an outcome, power imbalance, and alternatives such as negotiation, arbitration or court proceedings.
   3. The strongest reasons for and against mediation in this case.
   4. Information that could change the assessment.
   5. Questions I should ask a UK solicitor and questions to ask a prospective mediator.
   6. A cautious provisional view using only one of these labels: likely suitable, possibly suitable after legal advice, or currently unsuitable. Explain the label and identify what a solicitor must check before I act.
   Do not recommend a settlement figure or draft admissions. Flag any point that requires current UK legal advice.

   Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.