Posted: Friday, 4 January 2019 @ 13:43
One of the aspects of mediation is the fact that it is very competitive and in fact that there it is very difficult to obtain work.
One of the best pieces on the subject was presented and written by Matthew Rushton, editor of the Mediator Magazine.
"It would be hard to imagine that anyone involved in contentious work since the Woolf Reforms has not heard of mediation. Lord Woolf himself is now a mediator, among other things. Cherie Blair, likewise, is also a mediator. Former Court of Appeal judges Sir Henry Brooke, and Sir Jonathan Parker are mediators. Other judges, like Sir Gavin Lightman, have moved into mediation, and serve to bolster and enhance mediation's profile. Add this to the fact that it's pretty hard not to consider mediation in any High Court dispute, and it's easy to imagine that mediation is another solid, enduring pillar of the legal system.
It is no such thing.
Cut away mediator training - and we absolutely should - and what you're left with in the UK, is enough work to keep at most 50 professional mediators tolerably busy and tolerably paid.
And this is mediation's dirty little secret: it's barely happening at all.
There's no reason to believe this state of affairs can't change, but as a community, this is something we must come clean about.
Churchill once said that "However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results." For mediation, the results aren't pretty."
It is this criticism which Matthew has made of the profession which illustrates beyond the self importance of some mediators and providers, the mediation profession is fundamenaltly dead as it is incapable of providing a service to its practitioners.
So what to do?
1 Get real. Matthew's article should be required reading.
2 Focus on skills. Whilst for the bulk of mediation professionals, making money is difficult, it may be better to focus on the skills such as enhanced understanding, better negotiation and saving money within disputes. A mediator should have complentary business skills.
3 Whether a would be mediator can make money focusing on these skills is another issue. In my experience business is built up by skilled working, but what is one fundamentatay selling?
4 Ultimately as professionals, we should ask ourselves, where do we provide most value in the world?
Justin Patten, Mediator