Quantifying the cost savings via ADR and ODR

I welcome any suggestions from our distinguished members in terms of measuring the value of mediation vs. litigation. I need to show quantification and case studies to make my point with a local government entity to embrace ADR/ODR more enthusiastically vs. court proceedings.

I am grateful to Bryan Hanson and Professors Rainey and Mayer for their responses. I look forward to hearing from more Creighton faculty, students, and alumni. I could use more firepower in the form of measurable data and results to make my case. Thanks everyone for your help.

Cordially,

John Turley, 2010

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Permalink Reply by Jeff Thompson on November 21, 2011 at 8:53am

John,

As you already had responses from such great professionals in our field, I am sure this is redundant but I'll mention (briefly) the following advantages:

Time - conflict resolution options are usually resolved much quicker compared to the 'traditional' methods. Also, often in court connected situations, you can try, for example, mediation, while you still wait (and wait, and wait) for the case to be called by the judge.
Money - fees and money lost by having to appear multiple times at court compared to mediation or another conflict resolution option is often much cheaper.
Control - The party(s) decide the outcome, not some stranger sitting behind some big desk.

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Permalink Reply by John C. Turley on December 6, 2011 at 10:40pm

Thanks Jeff! Your information is great and will be included in my study. Actually, I did not receive many responses to my request for information. Professors Mayer, Rainey and Bryan Hanson graciously responded for which I am grateful. Professor Pearlstein will send me more information in the coming weeks. The Creighton Professors referred me on to other executives and experts in the field who were very helpful. I agree with you that the top people responded, so I guess that less is more.

I found that my own research proved to be very rewarding. I developed a plan, process, and methodology for determing and then measuring the comparative costs between litigation and ADR based on models that we used in the IT industry to determine the Total Cost of Ownership(TCO) of hardware and software. Also, IT outsourcing models with the Six Sigma methodology provided the quantification discipline to uncover all of the fixed and variable costs. As soon as I have more information and am able to validate my processes and methodologies against the actual data, I will share my findings with interested parties.

Thanks again Jeff and to the respondents.

JCT