"Expenses and Expenses" that is what comes to every persons mind who is contemplating of embarking the Civil Justice System. The fact is that bringing a claim or defending a civil claim can be very expensive considering the court fee, lawyer's fee, and the list goes on. However there might be a procedure through which an escape from this ensuing expense and it is called Alternative to Dispute Resolution (ADR).
ADR is basically what its name suggests that it is an Alternative to Dispute Resolution.
Litigants will be given an option to make use of the ADR procedure rather than starting a claim in the court is presented. People are encouraged to embark ADR rather than continuing the claim in the court as the benefits of using the ADR procedure is immense. ADR saves time, the annoyance of going to court, publication of confidential information in a public court, and in more than not it saves huge amount of expense. There are different types of ADR process that one can utilize, and they are Arbitration, Mediation, Conciliation, Settlement Conference and Neutral Evaluation.
One thing that should be noted is that ADR does not always succeed however over the years there have been a lot of claims all over the world that did not reach the court rooms because ADR succeeded and the parties settled outside court.
Though the concept of ADR in Bangladesh is relatively new as the first concrete laws relating to ADR was enacted in 2001 and it was called Arbitration Act 2001, however ADR has been used in different countries for many years and it yielded a very high rate of success. As in the United States of America in 2013 the success rate of ADR was 75% which meant a total of $35, 0777,997 was saved and more importantly a total of 2,692 months of Litigation was not required saving the precious time of the court. So, the concept of ADR is fast growing and some can argue is more efficient than the traditional route of litigation.
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