Assuring Quality in ADR Practice & Programs

Assuring Quality in Provider Organizations

ADR programs themselves perform tasks in providing services. In addition to assessing practitioner competence, they conduct screening, provide training, mentor and monitor neutrals as well as provide intake and follow up and assign cases. These provider organizations have special responsibilities to provide fair, impartial, and quality processes. Programs should also be assessed on a regular basis. Some methods for accomplishing this include: consumer input, review of complaints, self-assessment, regular audits, peer review and visiting committees from other programs.

The CPR-Georgetown Commission on Ethics recently proposed Principles for ADR Provider Organizations. These principles recognize the central role of the ADR provider organization in the delivery of fair, impartial, and quality ADR services. According to the Commission, an ADR Provider Organization includes any entity or individual holding itself out as being able to (1) provide prospective users with conflict management services directly, or (2) provide prospective users with conflict management services indirectly through the management or administration of such services-including referral, clearinghouse, roster creation, brokering or similar activities. "Conflict management services" include activity as a neutral third party assisting disputants to clarify or resolve their conflicts, as well as provision of consulting, design, training, or other services intended to enable a user to better employ neutrals or enhance the capacity to resolve conflicts more effectively.

Several core principles guide this effort:

It is timely and important to establish standards of responsible practice in this rapidly growing field to provide guidance to ADR provider organizations and to inform consumers, policy makers, and the public generally.
The most effective architecture for maximizing the fairness, impartiality, and quality of dispute resolution services is the meaningful disclosure of key information.
Consumers of dispute resolution services are entitled to sufficient information about ADR provider organizations and their neutrals to make well-informed decisions about their dispute resolution options.
ADR provider organizations should foster and meet the expectations of consumers, policy makers, and the public generally for fair, impartial, and quality dispute resolution services and processes to ensure that best practices will be highlighted in the development of the field.

The CPR-Georgetown Commission on Ethics recommended several possible approaches to addressing the numerous issues of quality, selection, administration, access, oversight, and design that converge when public and private entities provide ADR services. It recognized that, as dispute resolution activity becomes increasingly institutionalized, the need will grow for those who administer ADR programs to ensure that their efforts are effective and their activities viewed as fair and appropriate.

The Commission recognized that provider organizations' efforts should be drawn from the following:

Obtaining consumer input/review of complaints. Some programs, like the D.C. Superior Court's Multi-Door Courthouse, seek parties' or lawyers' feedback as to the manner in which they have administered a case, in addition to their assessment of the neutral's performance.

Self-assessment/performance audits. Occasionally, programs have either retained a consultant, or undertaken themselves, to evaluate their administration efforts.

Peer review. This could include seeking review and input from administrators of other ADR programs or from ADR experts who can provide an unbiased look at the program's operation.

Finally, provider organizations can help themselves by doing more to share information and experiences among themselves, think through matters of effective systems design and evaluation, and focus explicit attention on "best practices" much as mediator groups have begun to do.

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