Conflict management systems ... [are] apparently an emerging phenomenon in American corporations. ... In many companies with strong ADR policies, ADR isn’t simply a set of techniques added to others the company uses but represents a change in the company’s mindset about how it needs to manage conflict.”

--David B. Lipsky and Ronald L. Seeber, “The Appropriate Resolution of Corporate Disputes: A Report on the Growing Use of ADR by U.S. Corporations,” Cornell/PERC Institute on Conflict Resolution, 23 (1998).

For decades, every first-year law student in North America has been welcomed to the adversarial system, and told that this system is a cornerstone of democracy, where the legal representatives for all adversaries will advance their clients’ positions as strongly as possible.  The theory is that the judge will have the benefit of the best presentations and make the wisest decision.

Today, only a tiny percentage of disputes arrive before a judge, and just a fraction of those cases go all the way to trial and judgment without being settled.  This is partially due to the fact that lawyers and disputants have begun to use other ways of resolving their disputes, such as negotiations, among themselves or through their lawyers; arbitration, where a neutral third party makes a binding decision; and mediation, where a neutral third party does not decide but rather assists the disputants in developing their own solutions.  These approaches fall under the umbrella of alternative dispute resolution.