Professional mediators save businesses £1bn a year

The commercial mediation profession saves businesses more than £1bn in wasted management time, damaged relationships and legal fees, a new survey claims.

The research from the Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution (CEDR)—The Third Mediator Audit—suggests these savings are achieved at a cost of only £8.2m in terms of total fee income to the mediation profession.
Since 1990, the mediation profession has contributed savings of £6.3bn, the audit shows, with the total value of mediated cases since then being £23.5bn.

CEDR admits the total value of cases mediated can be influenced by the impact of big cases—such as a single £1.5bn corporate transaction mediated by CEDR in 2006—but even excluding the effect of such cases, the total value is still about £4.1bn. The audit found that about 3,700 mediations were performed in the last year—up 33% since 2005.

Mediation fees of the top mediators now average £3,120 with 13% of experienced mediators earning at least £282,000 per year, compared to £177,000 in 2005.

Eighty experienced mediators dominated the market, being involved in 80% of cases. Within this group 35 individuals performed 57% of all cases.

See www.cedr.com for the full results.