Graham Massie charts the growth & success of mediation across the civil justice landscape
At the end of the 20th century an anecdotally large proportion of the legal sector regarded commercial mediation as a nuisance that got in the way of litigation. Today (and 28 years since commercial mediation began to put down roots in the UK) that era would appear to be behind us as the key finding from the 2018 CEDR Mediation Audit shows an increase of 20% since 2016 in the number of mediations that take place each year. If one looks at the Quarterly Civil Justice statistics published by the government in recent years (when removing small claims) you come to a number of just over 60,000 claims a year against which 12,000 mediations taking place over the same period looks rather healthy.
The primary focus of the audit, conducted for the last 16 years biennially by the Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution (CEDR) as part of its public mission, is to assess how the market and mediation attitudes are changing. The audit is conducted alongside a survey of
