Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR)

Sometime during 1992 when I first attended L101(introduction to law) lecture at the university, I learnt that, amongst others, law is a means of social control to maintain peace and order in a society.
There are instances where the lawyers do not have to apply the law exclusively to resolve their clients’ disputes. Instead, they resort to ADR for various advantageous reasons. Mediation is a commonly used ADR method in divorce cases. Mediation is faster and cheaper for the clients as opposed to a full-blown adversarial case that is normally argued in court.
The Mediator seeks to achieve the following: to help the clients to understand the nature of their legal problems better and to facilitate the discussion with a win-win attitude. No one comes out as a winner. Adding a new layer of knowledge in the clients’ mind also quickly help them to see their problem in a totally new and enlightened perspective. They end up appreciating the advantage of “principle-based bargaining strategy” over the “positional-based bargaining strategy”. In that way, it becomes very easy to come up with a balanced settlement agreement to protect the clients’ proprietary rights when married in community of property and profit and loss with or without accrual system.
The clients who are embroiled in a divorce case tend to drain the lawyers both mentally and emotionally. In many occasions they change positions from time to time due the stressful transition that they go through. Divorce brings about a sudden and shocking change in people’s routines and career lives. Patience and counselling skills on the part of the lawyers are of paramount importance here. There is no doubt that mediation fast tracks completion of divorce cases, as an example. At the end of the day, it becomes apparent that it would not be in the interest of the divorcing clients to wash their dirty linen in public! There is still life after divorce especially if there are minor children involved after divorce that require co-parenting by the divorcing clients.