What is ADR?
There are a number of ways to resolve disputes; some that don’t involve courts and many that can take place either as part of the court process or simultaneously with it.
Where you use one of these other methods they are called ‘Alternative Dispute Resolution’ – ADR.
Often an independent person is used to assist the parties to sort out their differences, either by making a decision that binds the parties or by simply helping to provide ideas, assist in narrowing the issues and provide an environment for agreement.
There are a number of different methods of ADR that can be used individually or in combination, including:
- negotiation
- mediation
- conciliation
- arbitration
- expert determination
- early neutral evaluation
and if they don’t solve the dispute then you’ll likely end up in litigation
What are the benefits of ADR?
Using one or more different methods to resolve disputes has a number of benefits:
| Flexibility | the parties can decide the method that best suits them |
| Speed | the process is much quicker than the courts |
| Cost | with the speed of resolution generally comes a much lower cost |
| Privacy | the dispute is not aired in a public court room |
| Control | the parties choose the independent advisers to assist them |
| Focus | the parties can quickly focus on the real issues and not allow the process to run off the tracks |
| Informality | the lack of formality makes the process much less stressful |
| Ownership | there is normally greater satisfaction with the result as the parties will have been much more involved in designing the final outcome and owning the solution. |