Over the past year, both the civil judiciary and the Ministry of Justice have made clear their shared policy aim of bringing about a paradigm shift in the civil justice system, to one in which the potential for ADR is embedded into court procedure and culture at all stages of the process (see, for example, here and here). That policy drive has reactivated the longstanding debate over the extent to which litigants should be compelled to engage in ADR – particularly since the Civil Justice Council’s June 2021 report endorsing compulsory ADR in principle.
We have previously made the point that any discussion of how ADR should be used in civil disputes can only meaningfully be advanced by having regard to the particular features of the many different types of claims within the civil disputes spectrum. The issue of compulsory ADR is no exception to that.
Jan O’Neill has published a post on Practical Law’s Dispute Resolution blog which considers this debate in the particular context of complex and large-scale commercial claims in the English courts. Click here to read the post.
For further information, please contact:
Jan O’Neill, Herbert Smith Freehills
Jan.ONeill@hsf.com
