When you hear about the word landscape of dispute resolution, the first thing that comes to mind is litigation before a court of competent jurisdiction. However, people need to be made aware that the landscape of dispute resolution quite wider. It includes arbitration and mediation besides litigation.

When one compares these three avenues for dispute resolution, one cannot help but feel that there is a significant difference between them. If one compares litigation with arbitration and arbitration with mediation, without delving into details, he or she can easily conclude that litigation is a long and arduous process and it can go on and on.

When one goes to the court, the dispute goes into the public domain. Before a court one has to justify what is asked for and present evidence that supports the claim. It is to be hoped that the other party does not have and presents damaging facts about the claim and that the judge understands the issues involved and orders in one’s favor. It is evident that litigation is about a number of big ‘ifs’.

When one reviews the process of arbitration, it is apparent that while it is another process but out of the court and here again the decision lies with a third party, as in litigation and much like litigation one has to substantiate and verify whatever is being claimed from the party opposite and again while it is not in the public domain but this too can be time consuming and costly like litigation.

However, when one compares mediation with both litigation and arbitration, one cannot help but notice that it is not only a flexible process but also a confidential process and; more importantly, it is a process that is driven by the parties to the dispute’s desire to settle with the decision in their own hands. The mediator is just facilitating and pushing the process. So it is the parties who are ultimately going to decide the end result of the dispute and unlike arbitration and litigation, it usually takes less time and invariably ends in some settlement within a week or two.

A perusal of the three processes highlights that while litigation and arbitration are similar and time consuming and dependent on third party decision, mediation is flexible, confidential, and solely driven by the contestants desire to settle as they are the masters of their own fate.

As is evident from the comparison above that the landscape of dispute resolution should be moving towards mediation and people must consider this alternative solution to get their dispute resolved privately with confidentiality at a substantially lesser cost in time and money. Furthermore, since the disputants resolve their difference amicably very likely they will not end up as adversaries for the rest of their lives.

When one sees courts full of cases and people moving around seeking justice but due to long pendency because of over-burdening of courts they are unable to get prompt justice or relief. It is a well-known “Justice delayed is justice denied” legal maxim. When one looks at the prevailing system, consisting of the troika of lawyers, judges and litigants drives the entire process in courts.

In modern society time is money and if one considers commercial disputes, an amount due today, being awarded after a substantial delay of 10 years renders the said amount meaningless because the money has devalued, and the litigants realize that the process before the court in which substantial cost had been incurred was a mistake even though one may have won in the court.

Another driving factor behind litigation is the fact that most, if not all, people seek to get what they want and their victories are built upon the miseries of their adversaries. Unfortunately, such people ignore the fact that the commercial world is all about building relationships, coexisting, working together and in such instances the wounds of litigation cannot be mended. In such cases, people are advised to mend their ways through dialogue and in such cases, mediation, which strives for co-existence and party driven resolution, where both parties mutually agree and mutually resolve their dispute is the way for resolving disputes.