A study of Aaster by Aldo Bonomi, commissioned by Unioncamere, draws a portrait of the institution of out-of-court mediation, probing the depth of its penetration into the culture of Italian law and into society one year after its entry into force. The research by Aaster, a consortium directed by Aldo Bonomi, is based on a double sample: 50 in-depth interviews mainly addressed to heads of mediation organizations, cross-referenced with the results of a questionnaire addressed to about 1.200 professionals, mediators and non-mediators.
The picture that emerges is the portrait in chiaroscuro of a change, even before cultural than practical, which is slow to arrive, and of a young and still unexpressed instrument, which could transform the culture of our law, but is still far from doing so, squeezed as it is between the formal adjudication of the courts and the hostility of the professionals, despite the "constant favor of the political authorities and the world of the Chambers of Commerce".
There are many numbers contained in the Aaster report, entitled "The mild law - Mediation and the world of the professions", and useful for outlining the outlines of the discourse.
There are about 40 new mediators, equally divided between men and women, and the majority of them (58,6%) come from the legal profession. The main reason declared for choosing to become mediators would be idealism, indicated as a motivation by 37,5% of the interviewees, while the financial component (over 60% of the interviewees, moreover, declare themselves dissatisfied with their salary) appears irrelevant in the choice.
There are many problems blocking the expansion of the institution of mediation, problems that are difficult to resolve such as the weak professionalization of the mediator (only 5% practice it exclusively), lack of trust, and scarce cultural legitimacy.
Very intricate, and central, it is the relationship with the professional orders. A very complicated relationship which, as Bonomi effectively explains in the report, pays the heavy price of the difficult situation in which the introduction of out-of-court mediation has taken place, at a critical moment in the relationship between the State and Orders, who have fallen on a war footing against the threat posed by liberalization.
And, in fact, the distrust, which at first had reached even more radical proportions, of professional orders towards mediation remains very high, considered by two thirds of professionals as something that will worsen their working conditions.
And the hostility of orders, in the form of "unwillingness to offer mediation to customers", seems to be one of the strongest reasons for the lack of boom in ADRs (Alternative dispute resolution), together with the lack of knowledge of the tool on the part of companies and citizens and a cultural backwardness of the Italians on the subject.
Many reasons, therefore, a sea of different explanations to tell a single story, that of a tool, mediation, which is still slow to establish itself, and today remains unresolved, suspended in mid-air, like a neglected appendage of law. The way to become something else (or perhaps simply something) exists, and has already been traced, but it is long and tortuous to go.
Attached is the Aaster report "The mild law - Mediation and the world of the professions"
Attachments: mediation report summary (def).pdf
