HUMAN LAW MEDIATION

The rise of litigation - You will have no choice but to mediate because your clients cannot afford going to Court

A good brief article on Legal Week.

As we move into these interesting economic times, the former Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer, has predicted an explosion of ‘mega-litigation’ in the aftermath of the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Delivering the keynote speech at the Legal Week Litigation Forum in London, Falconer said the demise of the US’s fourth-largest investment bank would be a turning point for credit crunch-related litigation, unlocking a flood of cases.

“There is going to be litigation on a scale that we have not seen before,” he told the conference, predicting the emergence of “a new era” for litigation and dispute resolution.

Now with respect to this new era of dispute resolution, lawyers and their clients will be forced to consider mediation  beacuse quite simply they cannot afford other options. And let us remember mediation works in such a high % of cases, cuts out legal costs and offers more commercial solutions.  It is something some lawyers will resist due to impact on fees but ultimately they will not have any choice. Please see details of training we offer on this.

Is the law recession proof?

Interesting post from America -

"While Oregon's economy limps along, trying to pull itself out of three years of slow growth and high unemployment, litigation lawyers remain in high demand.

Reflecting a national trend, area law firms both large and small report that their need for litigators has risen in recent years. Schwabe Williamson & Wyatt, Portland's second-largest law firm, hired nine litigation lawyers in 2003 and has hired six so far this year.

Jim Finn, chair of Schwabe's litigation department says, "We have well over 50 litigators here. We have been very busy in the last three or four years, with lots and lots of different kinds of work."

Finn reports that all of the different groups in his department have seen an increase in work, including product liability, employment, construction and commercial litigation.

Schwabe also represents the Archdiocese of Portland, which has been involved in a huge amount of litigation and has now moved into bankruptcy court, generating "an awful lot of work" for the firm.

Finn, who has been in litigation for 25 years, expects business to remain pretty steady.

"In litigation, there seems to be less peaks and valleys ... there are certain areas [in law practices] that wax and wane," Finn says, but litigation isn't one of them. When the economy improves, Finn anticipates increased work for lawyers, and therefore demand for lawyers, in the areas of intellectual property, construction and real estate transactions. "

As we head into recession in the UK it is noteworthy we will be dealing with more disputes so certain kinds of lawyers such as insolvency, commercial and employment  litigation can be looking forward to more work.

Those who work in other areas may struggle.

Smaller Companies Are Missing the Benefits of Mediation

The recent Acas commissioned research report – Knowledge and Use of Mediation in SMEs suggests that many SMEs are missing out on the potential time and cost saving benefits of using mediation to resolve supplier, customer and employee disputes.

This research highlighted a real lack of familiarity with the practice of mediation – in fact only 7% of managers interviewed have used mediation and whilst a further 56% had heard of it the fact they had never used it meant their knowledge of it’s benefits was limited to say the least.

Such a shame when mediation can be a much more cost effective way of handling disputes than resorting to the Courts.  It was even more worrying to learn from the research that around two thirds of managers think mediation should only be used as a last resort, that respondents tended to think of it is an expensive way to resolve disputes and one only suited to large organizations.  We mediators clearly have an awful lot to do to educate this particular sector of the market.

In an attempt to encourage SMEs to try mediation for the first time I've started to offer a free half hour telephone mediation assessment to establish whether a dispute is suitable for mediation and provide an estimate of the cost.  I'd hope to be able to convince some managers of the benefits of mediation - at no risk to their business.

The research was conducted by GFK NOP on behalf of ACAS and involved telephone interviews with managers in 500 Small and Medium Enterprises.   It is part of a wider research programme being carried out jointly by Acas and the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development on the use of mediation.