Best legal practice dictates that court proceedings, while wholly necessary in some instances, should ideally be taken as a last resort. The resolution of disputes outside of a Court environment is, in most cases, preferable over protracted and costly judicial proceedings. By common consensus, persons with legal experience and qualifications are eminently suitable practitioners at mediation. This module is designed to enable final year students to harness the legal principles studied in the earlier stages of their legal education (in this case, during the completion of level 7 studies) with a view to formulating practical solutions to real legal disputes. A significant segment of the module will deal with the topic of Alternative Dispute Resolution and Arbitration with a focus also on Family Law Mediation.
Module Aim
The aims of the module are to familiarise students with the means of getting legal disputes into the correct forum, the issue of the correct forms of proceedings and the reduction of the essential issues in dispute to written format. A key segment of the module deals with the issue of arbitration with the final segment of the module will deal with the resolution of disputes by way of facilitative mediation.
Legal Disputes
Simple negligence action causing property damage and a Personal Injuries ActionBreach of a consumer contractBreach of a commercial contractFamily Law dispute: Divorce proceedings, Judicial Separation proceedings, Domestic Violence proceedingsBuilding Contract Dispute Nuisance actionBoundary dispute/right of way dispute between neighbours.Succession Law Dispute
Arbitration:
Submission to ArbitrationPoints of Claim and Points of DefencePreliminary MeetingHearingArbitrator’s Award
Alternative Dispute Resolution
In this segment of the module we shall hope to cover the true alternative dispute resolution, namely mediation. Amongst the advantages of ADR are speed, informality and above all the possibility that the parties will reach a solution which will each side to the dispute unlike a Court or Arbitration where frequently at least one side will be entirely dissatisfied. Mediation differs from the other forms of dispute resolution in that the parties themselves control the entire process. A further attraction of ADR/Mediation is that multi-sided disputes can be easily catered for. In a conventional law case or arbitration if there be anything more than three disputing parties the process becomes unmanageable. It should be remembered that public and legislative policy now favours the transfer of Court proceedings to mediation. The model of mediation chosen is the principled negotiation/negotiation on the merits model developed by the Harvard Negotiation Projection Project.This emphasises the following four elements:The separation of the parties from the problemFocusing on interests rather than positionsGenerating a variety of possibilities before deciding what to doInsisting that the result be based on some objective criteria
In person weekly Lectures.
| Module Content & Assessment | |
|---|---|
| Assessment Breakdown | % |
| Formal Examination | 70 |
| Other Assessment(s) | 30 |