Abstract
Court-connected mediation designed to foster more sustainable dispute resolution practices in Lithuania was launched in 2005. The article is an elaboration on Lithuania’s experiences relating to court-connected mediation in the realm of civil justice. It investigates the problem of the so called “plateau”, when the number of mediated cases stops to grow, thus raising the question of what is the future of court-connected mediation in general. Authors present the main features of the Lithuanian court-connected mediation model and stages of its formation. The autors strive to provide a better understanding of the possible causes for the problem under consideration, as well as underlying assumptions associated with sustainable dispute resolution practices in courts. Next, the results of the original quantitative and qualitative empirical survey dedicated to the analyzed problem and performed by the authors in the beginning of 2021 are presented. The research is supplemented by data from Poland, which presents a fracture of the problems related to court-connected mediation in Eastern Europe. Poland’s perspective provides a glance into another legal system, which chose a different model of court-connected mediation without the direct involvement of judges as mediators. Still, the data from Poland shows the tendency of a steady influx of mediated cases. The article ends with a discussion, conclussions and recommendations on the causes and consequences of mediation stagnation in the process of developing a court-mediation and, possibly, mediation in general. The paper is dedicated to dispute resolution experts, both practitioners and scientists, who are interested in Eastern European experiences and problems associated with the development of mediatiaton.
Highlights
The court-connected mediation was a starting form of mediation development in Lithuania, which, compared to out-of-court mediation, in the last 15 years showed incredible results by high numbers of enthusiasts who decided to join the list of court mediators and exponentially growing numbers of mediations conducted in the court
The main intention of launching court-connected mediation went in line with a need to promote social dialog and foster settlements, as adversial litigation could not be treated as dispute resolution process bringing to sustainability (Kaminskiene et al 2014)
During the last four years the number of the court-connected mediation cases is stable, but has shown no significant change. Such situation can be described as a “plateau” and requires to answer the question of what can be done to prevent such situation and even broader question of what the future holds for a court-connected mediation in Lithuania, and in the countries that face the same problems of mediation stagnation
Summary
The court-connected mediation was a starting form of mediation development in Lithuania, which, compared to out-of-court mediation, in the last 15 years showed incredible results by high numbers of enthusiasts who decided to join the list of court mediators and exponentially growing numbers of mediations conducted in the court. During the last four years the number of the court-connected mediation cases is stable, but has shown no significant change Such situation can be described as a “plateau” and requires to answer the question of what can be done to prevent such situation and even broader question of what the future holds for a court-connected mediation in Lithuania, and in the countries that face the same problems of mediation stagnation. Wissler (2004) presented the results of empirical researches on court-connected general civil case mediation and gave answers to the question of general effectiveness of court-connected mediation program used in the US. Opportunities of court-connected and private family disputes mediation were described in the work of Salomėja Zaksaitė and Zigmas Garalevičius (2009) Most of these works were published during the period when court-connected mediation “prospered” and was growing in numbers. Research was carried out using the methods of scientific literature review, document and comparative analyses, quantitative and qualitative empirical methods
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