New ADR Guidelines for Scottish Lawyers: a constructive step

Charlie Irvine

Here are a few choice quotes:

“As a law student, it is natural to try to force the parties to settle in the most appropriate way. Instead, as a mediator, I must sit back and draw out the appropriate information from the parties so that they can decide on the best solution for them.”

“Today our guest lecturer raised the issue of people thinking that proposing mediation is a sign of weakness. I must admit that I did think this. I think this is because of my 5 years of legal studies telling me that if you have a good case, you go to court, if you think you are not going to win, you want to settle. However, going to mediation is not a sign of weakness, it’s the exact opposite, if you have a weak case you wouldn’t do mediation as it’d show up these weaknesses.”

“I had got the impression that a positional bargaining method may be one that we, as lawyers, should be using in negotiations in the best interests of our client. I had not given the drawbacks of such an approach much thought.”

“The class also helped me to appreciate that a mediation is not simply a place for a lawyer to present his case to the opposition in front of a third party. The mediator is and must remain impartial, it is pointless trying to bring them round to your viewpoint.”

“I think as lawyers we are programmed into the adversarial mode of dispute resolution and discussing the benefits of mediation really highlighted to me that there are plenty of other options.”

“It is extremely difficult – I did not envision the role being as challenging as it was.”

“I entered into the mediation course assuming that mediation focussed on legal issues only. However, to my surprise, mediation encompasses a lot more and can offer real emotional settlement where a ‘win/win’ situation really can be created.”

I dedicate this blog to these students, who will be the ‘mediation advocates’ of the future.

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