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Stockholm Arbitration Report (SAR)

Preview Page SAR 2000 - 1

1. INTRODUCTION

With its Arbitration Institute long acknowledged in the world of international arbitration the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce has now established a junior sibling – the Mediation Institute of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce (below the “SCC Mediation Institute”), with its own set of rules for mediation (the “SCC Mediation Rules”). 

From a domestic point of view this is quite an event because the SCC Mediation Rules are the only mediation regulations at all available in Sweden, apart from a few provisions within the framework of ordinary court procedure. However, it could also be considered a non-event, in that mediation in one form or the other is an intrinsic part of the Swedish legal “milieu” and therefore something which many legal practitioners always considered a core activity.

From an international perspective the situation could be said to be the opposite – the event there is the swing in the western legal world from an adversarial approach towards more exploratory, consensus searching techniques. Already in 1997 eighty-eight percent (88%) of legal counsel of the 1000 largest U.S. corporations used mediation. As a result of this trend almost every dispute resolution centre with an international standing today has ADR-rules as a complement to their arbitration rules, one recent addition being the London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA).