Judges Told to Stick to Day Job as Mediation Pilot Fails

What a difference an ocean and Charles Parselle's accent make. The following is datelined 25 June from London, U.K.

The controversial pilot scheme in the Technology and construction Court (TCC) to test whether judges can act as mediators looks doomed to failure after being used just twice during its first year.

The judges' mediation scheme, when launched, was greeted with derision from solicitors, arbitrators and mediators, who described it as a terrible idea and not in the public interest. And following the pilot, few minds will have been changed

The chair of the Technology and Construction Solicitors' Association, CMS Cameron McKenna construction partner Caroline Cummins, said: "People like judges to
be judges, as that's what they're good at."

An interim report from King's College London shows the pilot scheme, known as the Court Settlement Process, received no interest from litigants in the first quarter of its two-year study.

The research found that almost a third of disputes settled were as a result of mediation, with almost half of the mediators being barristers.

Read the full article here and for more on this story from the new CKA Mediation and Arbitration Blog, click here.

Charles? Can you explain this for us? Anyone else with roots in UK law?

(your blog editor, by the way, thinks that anyone properly trained in and talented at mediation can and should pursue it professionally -- judge, non-judge, lawyer, non-lawyer, a butcher a baker a candlestick maker . . . . )