Settlement conferences under Rule 1:19

I heard something the other day about the possibility of the referral of state-court civil cases to judges for settlement conferences, and this week a form pops up on the Virginia judiciary web page for settlement conferences under Rule 1:19, so I guess there is such a thing, maybe I'll have to ask for one. This sounds too good to be true, it sounds like getting sitting or retired judges to mediate cases for free, so we'll have to unravel the fine print.