“That a lawsuit has been described as a machine: you go in as a pig and come out as a sausage” captures some of the frustration with the civil justice system. Those frustrations may partly explain why settlement occurs before trial in over 90 per cent of civil cases, and a substantial portion of the cases that do reach trial settle before judgment.
The Beldam Report, prepared for the General Council of the Bar, concluded that mediation should be offered to litigants at an early stage in the English court process. The courts should encourage the use of alternative dispute resolution, and the parties should acknowledge at case management conferences and pre-trial reviews that the question of resolving the matter by other means has been properly considered.
The lesson for any party contemplating proceedings is a simple one: the machinery of litigation is costly to enter and costlier still to leave. A process that invites the parties to settle early — before positions harden and costs accumulate — is not a concession. It is the system working as it was always intended to work.
