Summary: – 1. Introduction. – 2. The Status Quo. – 2.1 The legal framework for promoting settlement in civil and commercial disputes. – 2.2 The community of mediators. – 3. Changing Roles. – 3.1 Courts actively providing information about mediation. – 3.2 Mediators cooperating closely with courts. – 5. Concluding Remarks.
Background: This article addresses the challenges of developing mediation in Ukraine, the lack of effective coordination between courts and mediators, and issues of low awareness in Ukrainian society about mediation. It is argued that Ukrainian courts and mediation in Ukraine are going concurrent ways so that mediation is not integrated into or reinforcing the court-based litigation system. Meanwhile, the national mediation community must mature through the organization of high-quality interaction with the judicial system. Moreover, the war and post-war period will cause a new workload of civil and commercial disputes that are generally suitable for mediation, especially when the disputants residing in different regions after fleeing from war. This article is aimed at finding sustainable and fast solutions for raising awareness of mediation in Ukrainian society and effective coordination between courts and mediators based on the progress already achieved.
Methodology: This article used doctrinal legal research to evaluate the options of cooperation between courts and mediation, empirical analysis to examine judicial system performance and the mediation community status quo, analyse options for closer cooperation of courts and mediators, and find sustainable solutions for promoting mediation.
Results and Conclusions: Courts and the mediation community must work together to break the general reliance on traditional litigation; courts should actively promote mediation through sustainable means, and the mediation community should improve the quality control of mediation services, develop a complaint-handling procedure, and further progress with online platforms for choosing a mediator.