ADRMediator

What is Alternative Dispute Resolution?
Familiarize yourself with mediation, arbitration, and a hybrid approach using alternative dispute resolution.
By Katie Shonk — on April 15th, 2026 / Dispute Resolution

So, you’re stuck in a serious dispute, but you’re desperate to avoid the hassle, uncertainty, and expense of a court case. You’ve heard about alternative dispute resolution, yet you’re not entirely sure what it involves or how it might help. Before you resign yourself to litigation, it’s worth taking a closer look at these practical, often more efficient pathways for resolving conflict outside the courtroom.

What is alternative dispute resolution? Alternative dispute resolution, or ADR, is a process in which a neutral third party—a mediator or arbitrator—helps parties who are embroiled in a dispute come to an agreement. Mediation and arbitration (see also Arbitration vs Mediation and the Conflict Resolution Process in Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR)) are types of alternative dispute resolution because they offer an alternative to litigation.

In this article, we describe the two basic types of alternative dispute resolution in addition to introducing a mediation-arbitration hybrid that may be beneficial in resolving certain disputes.

What is mediation?

In mediation, a neutral third party tries to help disputants come to a consensus on their own. Rather than imposing a solution, a professional mediator seeks to assist the conflicting sides in exploring the interests underlying their positions. Working with parties together and sometimes separately, mediators try to help them hammer out a resolution that is sustainable, voluntary, and non-binding.

Mediators can help disputants break an impasse in the following ways, according to Harvard Law School professor emeritus Frank E. A. Sander:

1. Finding additional information that parties were unwilling to share with each other;
2. Overcoming parties’ resistance to communicating and reaching an agreement by presenting offers to both sides;
3. Contributing impartial, specialized expertise; and
4. Brainstorming options to find a resolution that satisfies both parties.

Mediators can be largely facilitative, engaging primarily in shuttle diplomacy and keeping their own views hidden. Other mediators are more evaluative, offering their own knowledge and opinions to guide parties toward agreement. “The most skilled mediators blend the two techniques according to the nature of the problem and the stage of the mediation,” writes Sanders in an article in the Negotiation Briefings newsletter.

What is arbitration?

In arbitration, the other primary form of alternative dispute resolution, a neutral third party serves as a judge who is responsible for resolving the dispute. The arbitrator listens as each side argues its case and presents relevant evidence, then renders a binding decision.

Disputants can negotiate virtually any aspect of the arbitration guidelines, including whether lawyers will be present and which standards of evidence to use. Arbitrators hand down decisions that are usually confidential, that is binding, and that cannot be appealed. Arbitration tends to be more expensive than mediation but less expensive than litigation.

Disputants can give the arbitrator the authority to determine who will win the case and what the award, if any, will be. The following are three specifics types of arbitration that are available to disputants, as described by Sander:

1. Hi-lo arbitration. In hi-lo arbitration, parties attempt to reduce the risk of making extreme decisions by agreeing ahead of time on the upper and lower limits of any monetary award that the arbitrator will grant. This strategy limits the risk to parties who are worried about giving total control over the outcome to an arbitrator.

2. Final-offer, or baseball, arbitration. In final-offer arbitration, which is often referred to as baseball arbitration because of its use in Major League Baseball contract disputes, both parties present a last, best offer to the arbitrator, who must choose one of the two offers. Because final-offer arbitration typically seems risky, it often gives parties incentives to negotiate a reasonable resolution. As a consequence, it increases disputants’ participation in a negotiation while still ensuring a decision will be reached if they are unable to agree. This type of arbitration is often used in labor negotiations for police officers and firefighters because communities cannot tolerate the risk of a strike arising from an impasse with such essential employees—an argument that some make about professional baseball players as well.

3. Tripartite arbitration. In tripartite arbitration, there are three arbitrators, one named by each party and one chosen by both of them. Tripartite arbitration is useful in highly complex cases where the parties want advice from three individuals with differing expertise (such as a lawyer, a businessperson, and a scientist). It is also used in cases in which the parties lack full confidence in a neutral arbitrator and prefer an arbitrator who will forcefully represent their interests.

What is med-arb?

An often-overlooked alternative dispute resolution process is med-arb, a mediation-arbitration hybrid. In med-arb, disputants hire a neutral mediator. If she is unable to resolve the dispute through mediation, she puts on her arbitration hat and renders a decision, explains Sander.

While this blended process ensures that parties will reach a resolution, it brings with it a certain level of risk. Disputants may be reluctant to be candid with a mediator who could later use the information they share against them in the arbitration phase of the process. They may be able to avoid this objection by having different individuals filled the mediation and arbitration roles, though this solution comes requires additional time and cost.

In sum, mediation, arbitration, and med-arb offer compelling alternatives to litigation the next time you are embroiled in a conflict that seems impossible to resolve on your own.

Dispute Resolution Case Study: Conflict on the High Seas
Conflicts over scarce resources are notoriously difficult to resolve. In dispute resolution, long-term thinking can help parties recognize their common goals, a case study from Europe suggests.

When parties are fighting over scarce resources, dispute resolution can prove especially difficult. A negotiation impasse may prolong the conflict, and agreements might need to be continually revisited. A 2018 dispute between French and British fishermen in the English Channel offers an illuminating case study of the importance of keeping long-term negotiation goals in sight.

Mutiny over Bounty
In Europe, the European Union sets fishing regulations for most species of seafood, but individual nations govern their fishermen’s catch of scallops.

French scallop fishermen generally operate small, family-owned boats close to shore and sell the scallops they dredge live, Dmitri Rogoff, the head of Normandy’s fishing organization, told Reuters. To prevent overfishing, France bans its fishermen from dredging scallops between May 15 and October 1.

By contrast, the British fleet includes larger ships that dredge scallops in deeper international waters, then freeze and process the catch onboard. In contrast to France, the United Kingdom allows British fishermen to dredge scallops year-round. British vessels can operate in the expansive Baie de la Seine, a 40-mile French inlet of the English Channel, as long as they stay 12 miles from the French coast.

The French fishermen have long resented the presence of British boats in the bay, urging them to join in halting scallop dredging during the summer to allow stocks to replenish. Frustrations escalated in 2012, when about 40 French boats tried to scare away five British vessels by surrounding and banging into them.

A Leaky Agreement
In response to the escalating tensions, fishermen from both sides began negotiating annual agreements that limit large British ships from dredging scallops in the Baie de la Seine and give several scallop permits to the French.

However, the agreement notably did not include restrictions on small British ships. In 2018, the French said that the British had “undermined the spirit of the deal by sending more and more small vessels” to the area, according to Reuters. Rogoff claimed that British fishermen ramped up scallop trawling and avoided renegotiation. French fisherman Anthony Quesnel complained to Agence France-Presse that the British scallop fishermen “work a month earlier than us and they leave us the crumbs.”

Fishing for a Solution
The conflict eventually reached a boiling point. In August 2018, a French TV crew captured video of approximately 35 French boats banging the hulls of about five British scallop boats and setting off smoke bombs. No one was injured in the clash, but the British asked the Royal Navy for protection.

The tension prompted the nations’ agriculture ministers to agree to get back to the bargaining table. In the interim, small British ships promised not to forage in the Baie. The two nations reached a negotiated agreement that granted British fishermen “reasonable compensation” for agreeing not to enter French waters, according to the Telegraph.

An All-Too-Common Tragedy
The so-called Scallop Wars can be categorized as the type of social dilemma that ecologist Garrett Hardin referred to as “the tragedy of the commons.” In such social dilemmas, each member of a group works against the common good by taking as much of a shared, scarce resource as it can. When all members act in a self-interested manner, the resource is depleted, and everyone suffers. Therefore, individual members face a dilemma between claiming value for themselves and restricting their behavior to contribute to the long-term survival of the resource.

Because parties have self-serving interpretations of what would constitute a fair agreement, social dilemmas can be notoriously difficult to resolve. Overfishing crises throughout the world are examples of unresolved social dilemmas. It’s unusual for parties to police themselves, as the French did, to allow the resource to replenish. When parties do police themselves, they are likely to resent those whom they perceive to be taking more than their “fair share.”

Dispute Resolution of Social Dilemmas
Social dilemmas can be resolved by enlisting a neutral third party chosen by all members to make a decision or provide counsel about what would constitute a fair settlement. Formal mediation, arbitration, and other forms of dispute resolution also can be effective at resolving social dilemmas.

In the case of the Baie de la Seine dispute, the negotiated agreement succeeded for a time at satisfying the parties involved. Hostilities broke out again in 2020, after the most recent agreement lapsed and the French accused the British of violating the spirit of the agreement. Thus, the story illustrates the importance of meeting to renegotiate agreements well before they expire and adjusting them to reflect new problems and concerns that may have arisen.

In sum, when facing an entrenched social dilemma, consider:

Enlisting a neutral third party to help you reach a fair solution.
Acknowledging the importance of safeguarding the resource for the long term.
Revisiting agreements frequently to see if they need to be adjusted.