Court-annexed mediation is mediation conducted under the authority and administrative structure of the court itself, rather than mediation the parties arrange privately. Many federal districts and state trial courts maintain standing orders or local rules referring some or all civil cases to mediation, often from a court-approved panel of mediators, at a set point in the litigation schedule.

The mediator's recommendation is non-binding, and the process is typically confidential like private mediation, but the referral itself is compelled by the court rather than by contract or party agreement. Fee structures, timing windows, and mediator selection are frequently set by local rule rather than negotiated by the parties.

Juricratic models a court-annexed mediation referral as a scheduled procedural checkpoint on the case timeline dial, a node the branch tree passes through automatically once discovery reaches a configured milestone. At that node, the simulation resamples the settlement-probability distribution using whatever evidence and Bayesian dial inputs have accumulated by that point in the run.

Litigators plan discovery and dispositive-motion strategy around the scheduled mediation date, since courts often expect the parties to have exchanged enough information by that point to bargain meaningfully, and a mediator's assessment at that checkpoint frequently becomes a data point in later settlement negotiations.