The ADR Group is to pilot a new method of dealing with civil and commercial disputes to keep them out of court, but practitioners have questioned whether such a service is necessary or practical.

The alternative dispute resolution service provider is to extend the collaborative law method - already in use in family, commercial and civil disputes in the US and in family cases in the UK - with the launch of a training programme for civil and commercial lawyers next month.


Collaborative law is a voluntary, non-adversarial dispute resolution process developed by US family lawyers who wanted an alternative to the traditional litigation approach.


Under the arrangement the parties sign a 'participation agreement', which prohibits the lawyers involved from appearing in any adversarial proceedings connected with the case in the future. If the collaborative approach fails, the parties have to instruct different legal representatives to take the matter to trial.


Michael Lind, ADR Group managing director, said: 'The approach is similar to a family mediation, using a series of structured meetings and a period of reflection to achieve a commercially sensible solution, but without the mediator and in accordance with the Civil Procedure Rules.'


He said the method saved time and money, and would be particularly useful for small to medium-sized firms with clients who may not be able to afford to go to court or who had an interest in confidentiality or maintaining ongoing relationships.


But Georgina Squire, head of litigation at City firm Rosling King, said alternative dispute resolution was already promoted heavily and used pre-action because of the CPR. She questioned the merit of using separate lawyers if the process failed. 'A lot of work is done under conditional fee agreements and I'm not sure how this approach would fit in with that environment, as parties may not be able to recover the costs of two sets of legal fees.'


CMS Cameron McKenna partner Tim Hardy said the concept is interesting 'but probably more aspirational than practical in commercial disputes'.