ADR has been both; increasingly used alongside, and integrated formally, into legal systems internationally in order to capitalise on the typical advantages of ADR over litigation:

• Suitability for multi-party disputes;
• The flexibility of procedure – the process is determined and controlled by the parties the dispute;
• Lower costs and less complexity;
• Parties choice of neutral third party (and therefore expertise in area of dispute) to direct negotiations/adjudicate;
• Likelihood and speed of settlements;
• Practical solutions tailored to parties’ needs;
• The durability of agreements;
• Confidentiality;
• The preservation of relationships.

Traditional people’s mediation has always involved the parties remaining in contact for most or all of the mediation session. The innovation of separating the parties after (or sometimes before) a joint session and conducting the rest of the process without the parties in the same area was a major innovation and one that dramatically improved mediation’s success rate.

Traditional arbitration involved heads of trade guilds or other dominant authorities settling disputes. The modern innovation was to have commercial vendors of arbitrators, often ones with little or no social or political dominance over the parties. The advantage was that such persons are much more readily available.