By establishing the Mediation Centre at the Bar Academy of the Slovenian Bar Association, attorneys-at-law are also striving to develop a culture of amicable settlement of disputes, while simultaneously contributing to the potential reduction of the courts workload. On the other hand, the Centre presents a possibility of conducting mediations for all those attorneys who are interested in it and opens an avenue to the new specialisation in the attorney’s work.
The Centre’s work simultaneously follows the purpose of the legislator, expressed in the Mediation in Civil and Commercial Matters Act (ZMCGZ) stipulating in Article 1:
“The objective of this Act is to facilitate access to alternative dispute resolution and to promote the amicable settlement of disputes by encouraging the use of mediation and by ensuring a balanced relationship between mediation and judicial proceedings.”
With the joint efforts and broad support among attorneys, the vision of the Mediation Center at the Bar Academy of the Slovenian Bar Association is to become a major extra-judicial private Mediation Center offered by Slovenian institutions. By using the Centre’s services, we will strive to achieve that the settlement of disputes through traditional means (courts and other bodies) will, in fact, become the “last resort”, which will only be used after all the remaining possibilities within the framework of the services of the Mediation Centre are fully exhausted.
All of us, attorneys, need to strive for the visibility of the Centre among the broader public, as it strengthens our reputation, and at the same time, with the services of the Center, we have an additional opportunity for a more efficient and quality performance of our work.