Mediating in the Shadow of the Court: Building an ADR Ecosystem for Technology-Lagging Legal Systems
Author: Syed Mudassir
Abstract
Court-connected and institutional Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) mechanisms have become a universal policy remedy for systemic adjudicative lag, but the academic literature on the design of ADR systems has been developed largely for well-developed and resourcestooled legal systems that are characterised by dense lawyer markets, reliable digital infrastructure, and strong enforcement systems. This paper challenges that gap by questioning how a viable mediation and arbitration system can be developed in “technology-lagging” jurisdictions—those jurisdictions with significant case backlogs, limited technology, inadequate professional ADR markets, and inconsistent enforcement of mediation and arbitration matters. The paper, using Pakistan as its main case study and contrasting with similar experience from India, Nigeria, Turkey, Malaysia, Bangladesh and international instruments developed under the UNCITRAL, documents the magnitude of the underlying problem: In Pakistan, as of 2025, the courts have pending cases in excess of 2.2 million, of which the district judiciary alone had pending cases of approximately 1.86 million (nearly two-thirds of which relate to civil cases). The paper traces the doctrinal history of judicial deference to ADR by way of comparative case law; compares the existing statute of the ADR Act 2017 and the provincial ADR acts with the UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Mediation (2018) and the Singapore Convention on Mediation to which Pakistan is not yet a party; and provides an empirical study of the comparative success rates of court-annexed mediation centres existing in Punjab and Balochistan. Based on these findings, the paper proposes a four pillar approach to the building of the ADR ecosystem in resource and technology constrained settings: (1) low bandwidth, asynchronous digital infrastructure instead of capital-intensive e-court replication; (2) tiered and exit-able mandatory referral, in lieu of fully voluntary and fully compulsory mediation; (3) a credentialing and enforcement bridge between domestic mediator panels and international enforceability instruments; and (4) hybrid lay-professional mediator training pathways, which are suitable for jurisdictions with thin formal ADR labour markets. The paper argues that jurisdictions that are lagging in technology should not try to adopt all of the elements of a capital-intensive, fully digitised ADR system out of the blue because institutional trust and enforceability are more important than technological sophistication, and that this process should take place in a sequence rather than a wholesale approach.
Keywords
Alternative Dispute Resolution; mediation; arbitration; court backlog; access to justice; Pakistan; Singapore Convention on Mediation; UNCITRAL Model Law; developing legal systems; judicial reform
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DOI: 10.52279/jlss.08.02.235249 | 235-249 | PDF