Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of Alternative Dispute Resolution - Essay Example

The same is known as alternative dispute resolution1. According to the available literature on alterative dispute resolution, there are four categories of ADR, which include arbitration, negotiation, mediation and collaborative law. There are experts who tend to cite conciliation as the fifth category. Other than negotiation, all other ADR categories include the person of a outside, unbiased and external person, which acts as the third party to facilitate the process and ensure that the parties reach a settlement.

There are thousands of cases of divorces, commercial disputes, family disputes, professional liability cases, insurance issues, personal injury situations and others, where ADR has proven to be more effective than the traditional court processes and the first choice of parties to resolve their disputes2. Nevertheless, there are some pros and cons of ADR. This paper, therefore, is an attempt to explore the various advantages and disadvantages associated with alternative dispute resolution. Discussion Advantages of ADR First, ADR offers the advantage of being cheap and quick.

On the other hand, formal court processes may take years and cost people a fortune. In fact, in many developing countries with huge populations such as India, Pakistan and others, it takes more than 20-30 years for a person to get a date for his or her case hearing. During the 1990s, a woman who was raped filled a petition in the court for justice. However, when her date for hearing arrived, it has been more than 5 years since her death3. Furthermore, many poor and lower class people forget about their issues and claims in various countries considering the legal fees, bribes and other money which they would have to pay for getting justice.

ADR, on the other hand, allows people to get quick and inexpensive justice. Many arbitration boards would take less than a few weeks before they could finalize their decisions45. Second, people prefer to keep their internal matters public; however, when they refer to courts for justice, everything becomes public. The bigger the case, the information about both the parties would leak into the public. However, in case of ADR, the same does not happen. Both parties cannot only ensure confidentiality during the investigations and hearings but if they want then the decision and results may also be kept only to people inside the rooms6.

Third, despite the fact that the judges and jury have great deal of knowledge about the happenings in the society, nevertheless, they are not the experts of certain fields. Therefore, whenever technical matters are brought up in front of the jury, huge investments in terms of time and money have to be done in order to educate the jury and even then, there is lesser chance that the jury would give a verdict after fully understanding the technical matters7. Fourth, courts have a limited number of options.

They are books of law, processes, specific rules and outcomes, which one can predict. In short, there are certain paths and processes, which the jury cannot avoid while making a decision. However, in ADR, the jury has the power to be more creative and give decisions in light of domestic laws, international laws, foreign laws or even religious laws8. Fifth,