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Alternative Dispute Resolution And The Civil Justice System

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The traditional way of solving disputes is by going to court, a process known as litigation. Unfortunately over the years it has developed into a complex, expensive and inflexible system1. The incompetence with the civil justice system did not go unnoticed, resulting in the report led by Lord Woolf entitled 'Access to Justice 1996 '2. Lord Woolf himself described his proposals as the “new landscape of civil litigation in the 21st century”3. His report aimed to combat the problems of cost, complexity and delay, ultimately focusing on increasing access to justice. This report has also introduced Pre-Action Protocols4 and the new Civil Procedure Rules5 which widely encourage the use of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) in solving disputes. This essay will focus on the advantages and disadvantages of ADR and the critical analysis of it in the civil justice system.
ADR
Alternative Dispute Resolution refers to any method other than litigation to settle disagreements. The most common are negotiation, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, and tribunals. Others include ombudsman and early neutral evaluation. The most informal way of settling disputes is negotiation between the parties themselves; with or without lawyers. The other 3 ADR methods include the use of an independent third party to settle their disputes. In arbitration and mediation, the decision made by the third party is usually legally binding, especially in arbitration and can be enforced by the courts. In

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