The initial data harvested at this major Convention may encourage ADR’s stakeholders to re-think some of their strategies. It suggests that international dispute resolution (IDR) services need to change in significant ways if they are to meet the needs of their users.

The voting data and chats are available for review and download on the web portal of the International Mediation Institute, a co-host of the Convention. Here are some highlights:

1. Two thirds of users rank risk reduction and cost reduction equally as the two most important factors in IDR, and few rank focusing on the key issues of the dispute highly. However, advisors rank focusing on the key issues higher than risk reduction while only 13% of users thought this to be a key factor. Providers ranked cost reduction low (15%).
2. Over three quarters of users think mediation should be used as early as possible in a dispute’s life cycle, but only 44% of advisors and, surprisingly, 42% of providers agree. Users strongly favoured mandatory mediation (66%), but advisors ranked it low (16%).
3. Two thirds of users and providers value contractual dispute resolution clauses that require mediation to precede litigation and arbitration. Only 16% of advisors agree. Advisors were unique in selecting litigation as the preferred method of resolving disputes.
4. Almost 80% of users desire arbitration institutions and tribunals to explore, in a first meeting, what other forms of dispute resolution may be appropriate to resolve a given case. But only half the advisors and less than half of the providers think the same.
5. Over half of the users, but only a quarter of advisors, think that in cases over a certain value, courts and tribunals should automatically initiate a mediation process from which the parties can opt out. Providers seemed evenly split on this issue, with a slight preference favouring opt-outs as well. Three quarters of educators favour this.
6. Almost all users (92%) wish that mediators, conciliators and arbitrators should be certified and held accountable to transparent standards of conduct set and applied by professional bodies. However, only a third of advisors felt the same way. Half of all advisors actually voted against certification, in direct contradiction to the views of users.
7. 85% of users, but only 47% of advisors see the need for an UNCITRAL convention on the recognition and enforcement of mediated settlements (i.e. a mediation equivalent of the New York Convention on the recognition and enforcement of arbitral awards). No users, but over a quarter of advisors, voted against such a convention.
8. Over two thirds of users, but less than a third of their advisors, desire cooling-off periods in arbitration proceedings to make a good faith attempt to settle using a mediator.
9. Most users, but only half of advisors, think an international platform should be created that enables users to express their international dispute resolution needs clearly.
10. Almost three quarters of users, but only 38% of advisors and 54% of providers, believe that mediators should be used in deal-making – i.e. the negotiation of international contracts even where no dispute has arisen.

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