Why Mediate Civil and Commercial Disputes?

Using mediation as a technique to resolve a dispute generally produces or promotes:

• More economic solutions as mediation is generally less expensive when contrasted to the cost involved litigation
  
  

• Rapid settlements - in an era when it may take as long as a year for a case to proceed to court and multiple years if a case goes to appeal, the mediation alternative often provides a more suitable option
  
  
• Mutually satisfactory outcomes – as solutions are agreed rather than imposed by a third party decision maker
  
  
• A higher rate of compliance – as a result of the satisfactory outcome, parties are more likely to comply the terms of the solution ensuring that the agreement remains in tact over time
  
  
• Comprehensive and customised agreements – solutions can often be more creative and wider in scope than could normally be achieved through legal process
  
  
• Greater degree of control and predictability of outcome - parties who negotiate their own settlements have more control over the outcome of their dispute and more personal empowerment in the resolution
  
  
• Preservation of an ongoing relationship or termination of a relationship in a more amicable way - a mediated settlement that addresses all parties' interests can often preserve a working or personal relationship in ways that would not be possible in a win/lose decision-making procedure
  
  
• Government and Judicial support – since the Woolf reforms to civil procedures in 1999, legal practice has increasingly included a settlement-based approach to disputes. There is now a duty on courts to actively case manage by encouraging the parties to co-operate and use ADR. There have been court cases, (for example Halsey v Milton Keynes NHS Trust (May 2004), when the parties have been fined for their refusal to consider mediation before litigation