A (very good) lawyer I deal with regularly in real estate tells me that a lot of his work now involves arbitration, mediation, and working for clients to help keep them OUT of the traditional (and costly) legal processes.
Arbitration can be a very good process because, while expensive up front, it is over rather quickly and the decisions are usually made by a person familiar with that field. For instance, a dispute between a construction contractor and a subcontractor would most likely be decided by someone who had worked in that field. It is basically a privitized form of dispute resolution.
The problem comes when the parties are not of equal bargaining power and 1 party can dictate what arb. board would be used. That can make things grossly unfair to the weaker party.
Mediation is a great tool that promotes a spirit of compromise. Quite often it will be used to settle a case that otherwise might have gone to trial.
Very few cases make it all the way to trial. If it does, it’s usually because it’s a case with bad facts or if someone made a mistake. The courts very much encourage arbitration and mediation. Many courts require the parties to go to mediation, although it can’t force them to participate in good faith.
Now that’s worthy. All or most divorces should have to go to arbitration also. As someone stated, it’s costly up front, but it’s caput quickly.
Now if only the news media (with the exception of a few) would go by the wayside also. Wouldn’t it be cool if the NYT and SF Chronicle and LA Times went out of business. Then PMSNBC,etc.