Despite the positive development of the European Mediation Directive and its translation in the German Mediation Law, in 2014 only 1.5% of the cases in court proceedings at the lower German courts were referred to court mandated conciliation or mediation proceedings. Against this background and in the context of a broader ten years research project, PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Institute of Conflict Management at the European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder) initiated a series of studies in 2005. This series was recently concluded with the fifth study conducted end of 2015 and published in October 2016. In addition to assessing the overall corporate landscape in Germany with regard to commercial dispute resolution, the study also considered the future developments and the required changes for further advancing this field.

The 2013/11/EU Directive on alternative dispute resolution for consumer disputes has forced the bar authorities in all European countries to think about the implementation of a dispute resolution mechanism to handle disputes between lawyers and their clients. The fear, if not done, would be that disputes between lawyers and clients would fall into the general consumer dispute resolution mechanisms, which many felt would not be adapted to the peculiarities of disputes between lawyers and clients, in particular concerning the proper respect of professional secrecy. Hence the need for the bars to develop their own system. The Czech Bar Association has been among the first to propose such mechanism to the Ministry of Industry and Trade. This article describes the broad outlines of the system.