When Lord Woolf’s civil procedure rules (CPR) were introduced in April 1999 – heralding the demise of litigation as we knew it – I took out the appropriate insurance policy in the form of an intensive course at the Centre of Effective Dispute Resolution (Cedr) and duly qualified as a mediator.
Judging from the number of other professionals -chiefly lawyers – on the course, this thinking was widespread at the time. But the nature and causes of dispute are endemic to human relationships and neither their frequency nor intensity are susceptible to moderation through law reform.
