Lord Judge, the Lord Chief Justice
Last year Sir Anthony Clarke was the guest speaker at the Civil Mediation Council’s annual conference, this year it was the turn of the new Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge. Lord Judge decided against entering the current debate about whether or not courts can or should have the power to compel mediation, in effect as part of the court’s own process. I have written previously about Sir Anthony Clarke’s and Lord Judge’s predecessor Lord Phillips’ views on this debate.
In his speech Lord Judge invited his audience of mediation converts to take a long term view about the current costs review being undertaken by Sir Rupert Jackson and any role mediation may have in the new costs landscape. He said
Can we just take a long term view? Every few years, or about every ten years, there is a great hullabaloo about the cost of civil litigation. Arbitration, after all, is a system of avoiding the court process. Do you remember when employment tribunals began? These were to be informal meetings at which the opposing parties would put their cases to a tribunal, almost a form of palm tree justice. Consider now how much more complicated and expensive the processes have become.
I do urge the Council to recognise this danger. The mediation process, could, unless danger is recognised and addressed, particularly if it is part of the court process, may eventually, and quite unintentionally, and by unforeseen accretion become increasingly formalised and procedural. It really must not eventually become just one more part of the expensive process that all of us are trying to avoid.
It is a valid and cogent warning but does rather over simplify the particular benefits a mediator can bring to disputing parties to one of just costs reduction. Of course his comments were made in the context of a very brief review of what Sir Rupert Jackson has had to say in his interim report but mediation is about so much more than reducing costs.
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