Evaluate the purpose and practice of Alternative Dispute Resolution Essay

Evaluate the purpose and practice of Alternative Dispute Resolution and discuss how successful A.D.R has been within the English Legal System - Essay Example escribes, ADR is attracting a wide range of sponsors, making it appear that it has the support of almost everyone.1 Judges in England are increasingly seeing ADR as a way to ease their caseloads. Government is attracted to ADR as a fruitful area for its own professional practice. This diversity of interests and motivations needs to be kept centrally in mind in any assessment or evaluation of ADR procedures and their place in civil justice. Roberts distinguishes what he calls three "lives" of ADR, in the sense that the label has become attached to areas of practice in three significantly different locations: In this third "life," ADR is incorporated as part of the judicial repertoire of dispute management techniques, and it is this third "life" that is of primary concern here. In approximately the last twenty years, the U.K., like the U.S., has seen a growing number of moves to institutionalize "alternatives" to litigation, albeit on a much smaller scale.3 Important examples include the growth of mediation in family, commercial, and employment disputes.4 A range of organizations and bodies have become established that offer mediation and other forms of ADR. Examples are the Centre for Dispute Resolution (CEDR) and International Dispute Resolution (IDR) in Europe, which offer a range of ADR methods in commercial disputes, divorce cases, medical negligence claims, and other forms of dispute. Thus far, however, the volume of work remains small. Lawyers have become increasingly active in ADR initiatives in England. A number of major reports has been sponsored by the legal professions disciplinary bodies--the Law Society and the General Council of the Bar.5 The Lord Chancellors Department has set up a major review of civil court procedure by Lord Woolf, one of our House of Lords judges, with a view primarily to cutting the cost of the civil justice system. ADR and civil procedure are increasingly seen as interwoven amongst academics. They were discussed together at the