At the American Bar Association’s Annual Meeting in Chicago, the ABA House of Delegates voted to accept the resolution jointly recommended by the ABA Section of Dispute Resolution and the Section of Litigation to adopt as ABA policy the Model Standards of Conduct for Mediators. This vote is momentous for the dispute resolution community here in the U.S. because it signifies the broad acceptance of a model standard for mediator conduct that bears the imprimatur of three organizations which are pioneering leaders in the ADR field.

The Model Standards of Conduct, originally drafted in the early 1990’s through the collaborative efforts of the ABA, the American Arbitration Association, and the Society of Professionals in Dispute Resolution (known today as the Association for Conflict Resolution), recently underwent numerous time- and labor-intensive revisions and improvements. The fruit of these efforts was presented to the ABA House of Delegates which yesterday voted unanimously to adopt these Standards.

The complete text of the original 1994 version of the Standards, along with the text of the April 10, 2005 revision, may be found here at the web site of the Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University.

A list of all of the ABA’s policies regarding alternative dispute resolution is available at the web site for the ABA Section of Dispute Resolution.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 10th, 2005 at 12:11 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.