ReSolution Issue 18, September 2018 | Page 5

Global Pound Conference report published
The Global Pound Conference series - a unique and ambitious initiative to inform how civil and commercial disputes are resolved in the 21st century - brought together more than 4,000 people at 28 conferences in 24 countries across the globe in 2016 and 2017.
The project focuses on the needs of Users (both corporate and individual) of civil and commercial dispute resolution services, and in doing so, it has prompted a much needed global conversation about how conflict can and should be managed in the 21st Century.
Herbert Smith Freehills, global founding sponsor of the series, collaborated with PwC and IMI (International Mediation Institute) to produce a report that identifies key insights that emerge from the extensive voting data collected during the series. With a focus on the needs of corporate users of dispute resolution, this ground-breaking report challenges the traditional and fundamental notions of what clients want and how lawyers should represent them in a dispute.
The report identified four key global themes:
• Efficiency is the key priority of parties in choice of dispute resolution processes.
Efficiency means different things to different stakeholders but this throws down a challenge to the way in which traditional dispute resolution processes meet the needs of the Parties seeking dispute resolution services. Finding the most efficient way to resolve a dispute may not always be the fastest or cheapest but it requires thought and engagement to bring appropriate resolution in acceptable timeframes and at realistic costs.
• Parties expect greater collaboration from advisors in dispute resolution.
Parties using dispute resolution services seek greater collaboration from their external lawyers when interacting with them and their opponents. This represents a potential challenge to traditional notions of how lawyers should represent clients in disputes.
• Global interest in the use of pre-dispute protocols and mixed-mode dispute resolution (combining adjudicative and non-adjudicative processes).
As global understanding of and interest in non-adjudicative dispute resolution processes grows, there is near universal recognition that Parties to disputes should be encouraged to consider processes like mediation before they commence adjudicative dispute resolution proceedings and that non-adjudicative processes like mediation or conciliation can work effectively in combination with litigation or arbitration.
• In-house counsel are the agents to facilitate organisational change. External lawyers are the primary obstacles to change.
The data shows a broad consensus that in-house counsel should encourage their organisations to consider their dispute resolution options more carefully, including using non-adjudicative processes like mediation and conciliation. External lawyers are reported to be – and perceive themselves to be – resistant to change, but a new generation of in-house counsel will challenge this resistance.