On June 23, 2022, the ten-day ADR Study Tour to Ireland and England involving representatives of the Mediators Association of Georgia, Georgian Association of Arbitrators, Georgian judges and business representatives concluded. The tour was organized by the USAID Rule of Law Program and the Global Compact Network Georgia.

The Georgian delegation consisted of Batumi City Court Judge Irma Togonidze, Tbilisi City Court Judge Vera Doborjginidze, Chair of the Mediators Association of Georgia Irakli Kandashvili, Chair of the Georgian Association of Arbitrators Jaba Gvelebiani, Deputy General Counsel of TBC Bank Natia Gikoshvili. The leaders of the study tour were Salome Zurabishvili, Lana Chkhartishvili and Konstantine Shubitidze from GCNG and USAID Rule of Law Program ADR Advisor Sophie Tkemaladze.

The participants met with leading practitioners, lawyers and users of alternative dispute resolution (ADR), and learned from their experience about different out-of-court mechanisms for dispute resolution, best practices for ADR, and tools to promote the usage of mediation and arbitration. 

The Ireland component of the visit started with a meeting with the Mediators Institute of Ireland, where participants learned about the accreditation and membership of mediators, the incentives that courts in Ireland use to attract parties in a dispute to mediation, as well as the European Judges Group for Mediation. This was followed by visits to the ADR Committee of the Bar Council of Ireland and King’s Inn (Ireland's oldest law school, established in 1541). The first day ended with the annual Ken McQuillan Lecture, where the Study Tour delegates met with the former Chief Justice of Ireland, Frank Clarke. Justice Clarke spoke about four factors that often make ADR better suited to parties’ interests than the formal justice system: flexibility of the mediation process, cost, speed and confidentiality.

The participants also had the opportunity to attend Dublin International Disputes Week, the Symposium of Dispute Resolvers, as well as the Dublin Forum, where discussions focused on the role of sanctions in arbitration, diversity in ADR, and ethical challenges in commercial arbitration. Particularly interesting was the meeting with the Irish Workplace Relations Commission, where participants learned about reconciliation and ADR mechanisms in the context of workplace relationships, employee rights, discrimination and inequality. The Georgian delegates also visited the Glencree Center for Peace and Reconciliation, and learned about the Center’s work in peacebuilding, peace education for youth and women’s leadership.

On June 20, the ADR Study Trip continued in London, where the Georgian delegation was hosted by the Center for Effective Dispute Resolution (CEDR), the world’s leading ADR training and service provider. CEDR was at the forefront of mediation development in Georgia; supported by USAID, it trained and accredited a pool of mediators for the country’s first court-annexed pilot mediation program in 2011. With CEDR’s facilitation, the study trip delegates met with and learned about: contracted ADR services in the telecom, aviation, utilities and professional services industries; running a claims service for small-medium sized businesses in disputes with banks; and the operation of state-sponsored clinical negligence claim mediations through the National Health Service Resolutions. 

CEDR also facilitated a meeting with the RICS Dispute Resolution Service, the world’s oldest and largest provider of ADR across property, land, construction and other areas of the built-environment sector. CEDR also arranged for the participants to tour the International Dispute Resolution Center, which provides state-of-the-art hearing/meeting facilities and accommodates leading international dispute resolution institutions. 

The London part of the study visit also included meetings with the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, London Court of International Arbitration, Arbitra International and “Mediator Academy,” as well as a visit to the Central London County Court, where the participants spoke with a judge and learned about the court-referred mediation practice in the UK. 

Two important meetings took place on the final day of the visit. At a meeting with the UK Ministry of Justice, the participants learned about the Ministry’s process for stakeholder consultations on the introduction of mandatory mediation in the UK. This is one of the current hot topics within the mediation community. The Ministry’s policy advisors also shared plans to bring onboard a pool of 1400 mediators, as well as the financial scheme for “mandatory” mediations, which will start in summer 2023. The final meeting was a debrief session with a leading international law firm, Baker & McKenzie. The session was particularly helpful as it allowed the participants to synthesize their ideas and takeaways after a long and insightful field trip.