A brief mention of mediation in the
Law Society Gazette.
"Personal injury mediation will gain in popularity as a result of the credit crunch, according to a leading provider.
Maurice Nichols, mediator and consultant to the Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution’s personal injury unit (PIU), said: ‘There are always two important drivers to personal injury litigation – the claimant wants to see an end to his case and get his compensation as quickly as possible – and solicitors’ cash flow as they are running a business.’ Today's economic climate ‘accentuates focus on both’, he said."
My view is that all this is correct and desirable but may be idealistic and may not actually reflect what happens on the ground.
At
Human Law Mediation, and our training we consider these are barriers to adoption of mediation within Personal Injury cases:
1 Application by judges of the Civil Procedure Rules. Essentially the judiciary is being too weak in pushing mediation with parties which they should be pushing with parties.
2 Resistance by parties for going to mediation. This stems from too much ignorance of mediation.
3 Resistance by lawyers to adoption of mediation.