There is a Civil Dispute Resolution Bill currently before Federal Parliament in the House of Reps. It reflects strongly the current federal government perspective that more needs to be done to foster early out of court dispute resolution. Its proposed new laws strongly support the line of thinking that I have been putting forth on this blog.

The aim of the new law i s to “improve access to justice by focusing parties and their lawyers on the early resolution of disputes.” It wants to ensure that parties take “genuine steps” to resolve a civil dispute before proceedings are commenced in any federal court or tribunal.

It wants lawyers to do more than just pay lip service to ADR (alternative dispute resolution) thinking and strategies and then return to the standard litigation mode of thinking. This is definitely NOT taking “genuine steps” to resolve the dispute out of court and, best of all, BEFORE court proceedings are commenced.

The new laws, if passed, will give more power to the courts to use stricter case management powers to ensure that such genuine steps have been taken before allowing the case to be further progressed down the litigation pathway.

It will also invest the court with greater power to use cost orders at the end of a case to penalize those lawyers who are revealed to have categorically failed to have genuinely attempted to apply alternative dispute resolution strategies to avoid long and expensive litigation.

This Bill draws on the recommendations of the National Alternative Dispute Resolution Advisory Council (NADRAC) in its report published in November 2009. A copy of this Bill and the NADRAC report are available in the Free Library of this website. Just click on “home” to go to www.chriswhitelaw.com.au where you will see the link in the top bar menu.

I will keep you posted on developments in this area.

Chris Whitelaw

www.chriswhitelaw.com.au

I have been given permission by the sender of an email to publish it on this site. I will respond to it publicly in a day or so.

HERE IS THE TEXT OF THE EMAIL -

I am a Law student at the University of Western Australia currently studying Alternate Dispute Resolution.

Your website, particularly your free library, I have found very helpful to my studies and I found reading through your credo and policies quite inspiring as a young future lawyer.

I was wondering, if I could ask your opinion on a topic that would assist me greatly with an assignment, I would love to know where such a well-respected legal practitioner stood in respect to this argument.

“To be able to properly discharge their duty to their clients, legal practitioners must have thorough knowledge of mediation and other forms of alternative dispute resolution”

Why, in your opinion is it so important for Lawyers to have sound knowledge of different types of ADR, in particularly mediation? How does it affect their ability to properly discharge their duty to their clients?

I understand if you are too busy to reply to my email, I would imagine you would have an enormous workload. However, if you are able to find the time to reply, it would be greatly beneficial and very much appreciated.

Anonymous

Law Student University of Western Australia

I was recently interviewed by Lawyers Weekly.

Here is the link - <http://www.boxbreakers.com.au>

They are conducting interviews with people who they think are doing things outside of the box - i.e. in an unconventional way or breaking new ground.

Chris Whitelaw

Dispute Resolver