Our objective is to ‘help advocates and their clients get the best out of the mediation process’, recognising that advocacy is embedded in mediation and that party representatives have to know when to abandon positions and move on to constructive solutions.
The current reality is that while lawyers (being the most typical of party representatives at mediations) are well-trained in advocacy techniques appropriate to adjudicative proceedings, advocacy in the context of problem-solving processes like negotiation and mediation is, by and large, left to the imperfect classroom of trial, error and acquired experience. Given the fast-growth of mediation as a common and often mandated form of ADR, this gap in training has to be filled.
