Can anyone recommend mediators in Dallas that they have had good experience with , especially from a defense perspective, and from a reasonableness in cost perspective?

There's a fellow here in Amarillo that I think very highly of on both fronts, but I've scrupulously avoided Dallas for the very reasons you cite. We had a bad experience a couple of years ago in Austin, so if you begin to look that direction, e-mail me and I'll pass along our big red flag in the beloved state capital.

In Dallas County, we use Dispute Mediation Service. The County has a contract with them and the cost is very reasonable ($100 per side for a half day mediation). The actual mediator you get varies, so it is kind of luck of the draw. Some attorneys I have mentioned this to were very resistant to the idea because DMS uses volunteers at times that are not licensed attorneys.

I have attended two mediations at Burdin Mediations here in town and they were good. They cost around $400 for a half day mediation, maybe more, but they served warm freshly-baked chocolate chip cookies to revive things when they began slowing down in the afternoon.

Email me at tsellars@dallascounty.org and I will pass along some more info of other folks here in town if you are interested.

There is a new breed of mediators in the North Texas area. We have Masters Degrees in Dispute Resolution from SMU. Instead of 40-hour
short "seminar" training, we have full graduate degrees in mediation that required a study of all major facets of law including family, employment, finance and property, civil, business, contract, etc. taught by some of the finest law professors, attorneys, and judges in the area, as well as hundreds of hours in the most progressive advanced tecnhiques of evaluative, facilitative, and transformative mediation taught by expert mediators from around the world. Feel free to contact me and I can direct you to professionala who specialize in various fields of mediation.
Shauna Erickson slse6@juno.com

Wade McMullen, Fort Worth, Texas