Mediation and Arbitration - Dispute Resolution

Building Bridges

Parties see Court proceedings as an expensive but necessary evil to resolve disputes.  Now they have a sensible, effective and cost-effective alternative - Mediation.

In Mediation, an impartial third party, the Mediator, helps the parties to a dispute to do what they have not been able to do themselves or through Solicitors:  to reach cost-effectively a settlement they are both willing to accept.  See the Mediation Questions page of this Website for the answers to some Mediations Frequently Asked Questions and the Horror Stories page for some extreme, but nonetheless real, examples of what can go wrong in Court proceedings.

Mediation is increasingly becoming the solution of choice for many disputes. A successful Mediation saves the expense and risk of litigation and is seen not as a sign of weakness but as a sensible attempt to do that.

An Accredited Mediator can hold the key to helping the parties to break the impasse in which they find themselves and to reach a resolution of their dispute.  Because it is the parties’ agreement, it can include innovative terms which the Court or an Arbitrator could not award.

Mediation can be:

Mediation is encouraged by the Courts, who themselves ran Mediation Schemes, now taken over by the National Mediation Helpline.  

In probably the bluntest judicial commendation of Mediation to date in a Court Judgment, Lord Justice Ward said, at the end of his Judgment in Egan v Motor Services (Bath) Limited [2007] EWCA Civ 1002:

"Mediation is a perfectly proper adjunct to litigation. ... The results are astonishingly good.  Try it more often."

The Master of the Rolls, Sir Anthony Clarke, speaking in May 2008, endorsed that by saying:

"What we need to do is to render mediation part of the normal pre-trial case-management process."

And the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, said that parties who refuse to mediate should explain themselves or face costs penalties. 

Trained and accredited by the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, whose programme is regarded as one of the most rigorous for Mediator accreditation, David Ellwood offers to act as Mediator in most types of civil and commercial disputes.

He works hard to ensure that the preparation gives the best chance for the Mediation to be successful.  At the Mediation Meeting, he shows tenacity and a determination that the process should succeed in removing the expense, worry, demands on time and uncertainty of Court proceedings.