Is Civil Dispute Resolution all about how best to balance competing objectives?

Stakeholders in civil disputes often find themselves between a rock and a hard place. The most efficient solutions lack procedural protections and the fairest solutions come at a cost which makes them unjust or just plain unavailable. This paper suggests that the key to optimising civil dispute resolution lies in acknowledging and accepting the underlying conflicts to enable proper focus on improving outcomes for disputants. To improve the services that lawyers, mediators, arbitrators, courts and other stakeholders are offering disputants, involves accepting that civil dispute resolution can’t be “just, quick and cheap” simultaneously, that ADR is efficient but at a procedural cost and that the optimal format for resolving civil disputes will vary depending on a large number of factors which are often conflicting in their nature. This paper will discuss 4 key conflicting imperatives of civil dispute resolution: (1) efficiency and due consideration; (2) certainty and flexibility; (3) privacy and openness; and (4) autonomy and control. The paper will then consider how understanding these conflicts can enable optimal resolution of civil disputes through both ADR and litigation.