Originally from Alternatives to the High Cost of Litigation

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There’s new data indicating that requiring an initial and reasonable mediation effort is producing results in Europe.

It’s not mandatory mediation, and the results are limited to one country’s efforts. But Turkey’s program allowing litigants to opt-out of mediation—mandatory referral but what proponents consider an easy exit, and which is seen as having more impact on litigation volume than programs that merely offer the ADR alternative—is clearly producing a lot of settlements.

Initial reports early last year, after Turkey reformed its labor law to push more mediation options, by the nation’s Ministry of Justice indicated remarkable uptake in just the first month. It showed a 72% settlement rate—4,637 out of 6,423—for the mediations conducted after more than 30,000 mediation requests. See Leonardo D’Urso, “How Turkey Went from Virtually Zero to 30,828 Mediations in Just One Month,” Mediate.com (Feb. 22)(available at http://bit.ly/2GRW2DB).