The New York Times, quoting to a person close to the antitrust case, reported Thursday that besides Judge Posner, chief of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago, the meeting will include lawyers representing Microsoft and the Justice Department and 19 states suing the company.

Posner, who was appointed as mediator by Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, is expected to quickly assess the chances of any settlement between the two sharply divided sides, the New York Times reported. If a settlement is reached, it will most likely happen in the next two months or not at all, according to another person close to the case, the Times reported. "By the end of January, or it won't happen," he said. Posner is serving as a mediator, not an arbiter, for the settlement talks. There have been sporadic settlement talks between Microsoft and the government stretching back to before the suit was filed in May 1998. Yet the previous efforts stalled.