Who mediates the mediators?

An issue that has interested me for a long time is whether or not mediators work closely enough together in promoting the use and understanding of mediation.

Whenever I attend a conference or training day or have an informal chat with a fellow mediator, I am always struck by the fact that invariably there is recognition that 1) not enough people know about mediation in general 2) it is extremely difficult for mediators to get the number of new clients that they would like to receive.

Understandably, there is a risk that this will lead to defensive approaches to the issue of promoting mediation. along the lines of thinking “as there are not enough people who know about mediation and as my mediation firm is finding it so hard to receive its fair proportion of new client enquiries, I am going to keep my cards close to my chest, hold onto my clients tightly, try to beat my competitors to these new clients and hope that my competitors’ businesses fail, thus leaving me with a greater market share at the end of this process”.

The situation becomes even more complicated when it is considered that there are 6 mediation organisations that are recognised by the Family Mediation Council ( https://www.familymediationcouncil.org.uk/ ), thus opening up the danger that, in a similar way to individual members, these organisation will fight amongst themselves to get ahold of the greatest market share.

Whilst such an approach might be inevitable in a fully developed market, which has already reached saturation point, thus meaning that there is very little scope to increase the overall size of the market, mediation as a sector is very different to this scenario.

As confirmed by anyone in the mediation sector who I talk to, there is wide recognition that only a relatively small percentage of people currently use mediation rather than either seeking independent legal advice, trying to sit around the kitchen table discussing the issues or simply ignoring the issues and hoping that they will go away. Whilst I have not need able to find any definitive research about this issue (and I would welcome links to any such research), anecdotally I would suggest that fewer than 10% of people who would benefit from mediation actually use it and that there is therefore tremendous potential for growth in the sector.

Whilst there is hope that the government’s commitment to promoting mediation will finally lead to a greater understanding and use of mediation, I would suggest that this process would be greatly improved if all mediators and mediation organisations were able to work together in as coherent a way as possible, at all levels from local to national, rather than falling into the trap of fighting over their slice of the current pie. Of course, the great irony to all of this is that it would appear that, in order to achieve this, some form of mediation will need to take place that allows the best possible outcomes to be achieved, ideally one where all the parties involved benefit in the process (i.e. from the increased use of mediation, which would benefit individual mediators, their member organisations and, most importantly, many more clients than at the current time), which is precisely what we, as mediators, are trained to do and spend our days doing.

It would be really interesting to hear whether you fell that there is far too much defensive action being taken and far too little collective action being taken, with this leading to the need for someone to come along and mediate the mediators, or whether you are happy with the status quo.

Thank you for taking the time to read this post and I look forward to reading your comments.

Euan Davidson

Family mediator

Godalming Family Mediation