Mediation &
Conflict Resolution
Resolve it in a room, not a courtroom.
Litigation takes years, costs six figures, and hands the outcome to a stranger. Mediation usually takes a day. I am Marilynn Schuyler, and I have been mediating disputes since I was first licensed — three decades of resolving conflict from every seat at the table: neutral, federal enforcement official, and counsel at an international law firm.
30+ years
in employment, EEO, and civil rights
10 years
at the U.S. Department of Labor, OFCCP
Georgetown
J.D. — first place, Negotiations Competition
How I work
Four commitments, in writing
A flat fee, quoted first
You know the full cost before you commit. No hourly meter shaping the session.
Both sides equally heard
The process is built so nobody leaves saying the mediator took a side.
Answered within one business day
Every enquiry. If I'm in session, you still hear back by the next morning.
Your dispute, not my résumé
Sessions start with your situation. The credentials stay on the About page.
Why mediate
The math is not close.
A contested employment case runs one to three years and routinely exceeds $100,000 in legal fees per side, before anyone accounts for management time, discovery, depositions, or the effect on the team still doing the work.
Mediation is private. Nothing said in the room becomes a public filing. Both sides keep control of the outcome instead of surrendering it to a judge or jury, and the working relationship often survives, which matters when the two parties still have to sit in the same building on Monday.
Save time. Save money. Save your sanity.
Practice areas
Disputes I mediate
Workplace & Employment
Discrimination and harassment complaints, accommodation disputes, manager–employee conflict, and internal grievances resolved before they become litigation or an agency charge.
EEO & Regulatory Conflict
Disputes with an equal-employment or civil-rights dimension, handled by a neutral who spent a decade inside federal enforcement and knows how these matters are actually evaluated.
Business & Contract
Partnership breakdowns, vendor and contract disagreements, and commercial disputes where both sides want the relationship, or at least the money, preserved.
Family & Civil
Separation, co-parenting, estate, and neighbor disputes, mediated with the privacy and pace that courtrooms cannot offer.
Process
What actually happens
01
Intake call
Thirty minutes, no charge. You describe the dispute. I tell you whether mediation can realistically move it, and what it will cost.
02
Preparation
Each side submits a short confidential statement. I speak with both parties separately so nobody walks into the session cold.
03
The session
Half or full day, in person or by video. Most disputes settle in one session. You leave with a signed written agreement.
The neutral
I have sat in the enforcement chair.
I have mediated disputes throughout my career — and I have also investigated them. Ten years at the U.S. Department of Labor, including as Assistant District Director in the OFCCP’s Oakland office, then years advising employers from inside Morgan Lewis and the University of California system.
That means I can usually tell each side what a regulator or a jury would actually make of their position. Parties tend to move once they hear it from someone who has been on both sides of the table.
Full backgroundBefore it becomes a dispute
Workplace conflict resolution
Facilitated conversations, conflict coaching, and team interventions for problems that need fixing while they are still problems, not cases.
Conflict resolution services →Tell me what the dispute is about.
A first conversation costs nothing and is confidential. If mediation is not the right fit, I will say so.