IDEAS FOR EFFECTIVE DISPUTE RESOLUTION – WHAT DO PARTIES WANT?
Anecdotally, in-house counsel are increasingly stating that the ultimate goal for businesses engaged in dispute resolution is not to win cases, but to find solutions. Essentially, this means that a dispute resolution strategy must use the legal framework to achieve parties’ objectives, rather than solely prevailing before a court or arbitral tribunal. External lawyers, however, often approach cases in pursuit of the most effective, risk-free way to affirm their clients’ legal rights.
So, what do we really mean when we speak about ‘effective’ dispute resolution? Effective with respect to what? And why do in-house counsel and external lawyers – who are all part of the same community and speak the same language – appear unaligned on this issue? This article analyses the current situation and explores ways for dispute resolution participants to operate on the same wavelength.
Viewpoints
The Global Pound Conference (GPC) is a global survey organised by the International Mediation Institute (IMI). Conducted between 2016 and 2017 through a series of conferences around the world and an online voting platform, the scope of the survey was to bring together dispute resolution stakeholders to define the status of dispute resolution and identify actions to improve access to justice, both locally and globally. External lawyers and in-house counsel were, of course, among the participants. In its 2016-2017 report, the GPC highlights how “one of the key discrepancies to emerge in the voting data was between how Parties said they wanted their lawyers to behave in dispute resolution processes and how those lawyers, the Advisors, saw their own role”.
Oct-Dec 2023 issue
MDisputes