NO COMPETITIONYour reporter seems to have misunderstood what professor Gwynn Davis says in his research into publicly funded family mediation (see [2001] Gazette, 5 January, 4).

The article suggests the report says that mediation has had a zero effect in reducing the numbers of legal-aid certificates or the legal costs of divorce.On the first point, what the report actually says is that the former s.29 has not of itself led to a fall in the number of legal-aid certificates issued.

In other words, the report is critical of the process which has forced parties to consider mediation before a legal-aid certificate is granted, but at far too early a stage in the marriage breakdown when the last thing they may want is to meet their partner in a mediation session.Mediators, forced to undertake a heavy burden of unproductive s.29 interviews as well as solicitors who have never been happy with the process, must hope that the research findings will result in a better process being found.On the second point, mediators have never claimed that mediation saves legal costs.

Indeed, earlier research by professor Davis shows that it is impossible to make that kind of comparison.

As a former family lawyer - now retired - myself, I have always been at pains to discourage the rather silly notion that lawyers and mediators have to be in competition.

Can we not both enjoy a brief moment of satisfaction from the nice things professor Davis says in the report about family lawyers and mediators?John Westcott, chairman, Bristol Family Mediation