Into the Courtroom 107
Mediation and Alternative Dispute resolution (ADr)
Paper napkins never return from a laundry, nor love from a trip to the law
courts.
—John Barrymore
There is a significant trend in legal circles nowadays toward a
process called Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR). This rap-
idly growing approach includes mediation, arbitration, private
judging, etc.—virtually any neutral system for moving cases
toward settlement, short of conventional litigation. Many of my
more-enlightened clients are choosing this tactic in preference to
costly trials.
Taking the high road of divorce mediation. Alternative Dispute
Resolution has become an increasingly popular way of end run-
ning the traditional legal system and its mysterious, convoluted,
and costly procedures. Clients who want to pursue ADR as an
approach to resolving their divorce must find an attorney with
whom they feel comfortable and who will follow a mutually
agreed ADR strategy in handling their case. Mediation is prob-
ably the most popular of the ADR options for the divorce context.
It should be utilized near the beginning of the case if possible.
Mediation takes a much more streamlined approach to quickly
bringing the parties in the dispute physically together and starting
them talking. They sit down in the same room with the mediator
and/or other advisors and work on trying to settle their own case. It
may sound overly simplistic, but once people actually try it, media-
tion generates an amazingly successful set of statistics. Mediation
has proven particularly worthwhile in the divorce context. My per-
sonal experience has been that about 85 percent of all divorce cases
can be settled in a properly handled mediation context.
The mechanics of mediation. Mediation is a cooperative problem-
solving process in which a neutral professional assists family
members in clearly defining the issues that are in dispute during
a marital separation or dissolution, and in reaching agreements
that are in everyone’s best interest. The mediator does not take
sides or make decisions for others, but instead helps participants
resolve misunderstandings and communicate more clearly with
one another.