Family law solicitor advocate David Burrows laments the opportunities missed in the Civil Justice Council’s recent report on compulsory ADR, in this week’s NLJ
There is ‘little sense of any real debate,’ he writes, and ‘no family lawyer despite this being where most of the practical mediation and in-court dispute resolution has been going on for the last 45 years or so’.
He reviews the report, which identifies conditions in which compulsion can be introduced. Burrows highlights the importance of parties defining the issues.
He identifies various concerns, and looks at the ‘possibility of parallel mediation: that at stages in the process, the parties could be encouraged to engage in mediation with a view to either settling the case; settling most issues, where they are divisible; or defining what the parties can agree that they still disagree’.
