In the latest issue of the ABA Journal, there is a great article about the nastiness of divorce litigation and the move towards mediation and other alternative dispute resolution tools.

One highlight from the article written by Jill Schachner Chanen reads:

Wider use of alternative dispute resolution is a key reason why more divorce cases are being resolved with less acrimony, say Hunt and other matrimonial lawyers.

“We feel that it has increased client satisfaction,” Chinn says. “We are resolving cases more quickly, for example, by moving immediately to a mediation date, practicing full disclosure, creating asset notebooks with the numbers and your position on them. It’s just to make it easy for the other side.”

Many jurisdictions now mandate mediation in divorce cases, especially where custody is at issue, Herman says. “In one of the counties that I practice in, there is an 80 percent success rate for [resolving] contested custody cases with mediation,” he says.

Check out the entire article here.