Online court will take the "A" out of ADR

Lord Justice Briggs quoted the following at a Mediation seminar held at the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators on 26 September 2016.

Mediation will become the cultural norm should a new online court dealing with all monetary claims up to £25,000 become reality, Lord Justice Briggs has predicted.

Briggs told the Chartered Institute of Arbitrator's mediation symposium that his recommendation for a three stage court will bring alternative dispute resolution "into the mainstream" of civil dispute resolution, a few quotes from his speech follow:

"in short,it seeks to take the "A" out of "ADR", that's why I would like to see the new court called a resolution or solutions court, following the lead set by British Columbia.

Mediation and other resolution processes would not become compulsory,Briggs stressed, but it would bring the court service into a much closer partnership with the ADR community in providing a suitable resolution process as the "primary route" to resolving civil disputes.

Briggs said: For several years local courts and private mediators cooperated in providing after-hours affordable mediations for county court cases until it fell foul of the closure of the National Mediation Helpline, but now these excellent initiatives, some alas short-lived, have really crossed the rubicon of making resolution rather than determination a culturally normal way of settling civil disputes.

The resolution stage of the new court is not meant to replace or discourage pre-issue dispute resolution.

The opening pages of the online portal for this court,or opening screens, like all civil courts in the future once digitised, will emphasise the alternatives to the issue of proceedings and direct would be litigants to appropriate providers of ADR.

Proceedings will be described in those screens as a last resort and issue fees will no doubt continue to provide another incentive to seeking resolution elsewhere first, with claims under £25,000 accounting for the overwhelming majority of civil claims by number, Briggs said the incorporation of resolution into the mainstream of the proposed new court would have more relevance for mediators than they may initially think.

"If this new court takes off and the public gets to like resolving their civil disputes in this less adversarial-solutions based way, who knows to what level of claim it may eventually be extended upwards ?" he added.

"Make no mistake, this is a wholly new way of dealing with civil disputes, with no limits on it's long term ambitions".

This could potentially be the breakthrough that we have thought mediation should achieve for a long time.