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Mediation Training

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need to be a lawyer to come on the course?

No. We have students from many other professions and occupations on our course: accountants, architects, surveyors, bankers, housewives, psychotherapists, management consultants, students etc.

It is true that approximately 60% who come on the course tend to be lawyers (barristers and solicitors), and the course is based upon mediation in a litigation environment, with many of the mock mediations taken from classic legal cases. Nevertheless, the course is aimed at a much wider audience, in fact, all those who need to deal with conflict on a regular basis.

Who grants the accreditation, and how widely is it recognised?

The SPCP grants its own accreditation, just as individual Universities grant their own degrees. Our course has been fully vetted by the Law Society Training Standards, and the accreditation has been approved for the purposes of the Law Society’s Civil/Commercial Mediation Panel, to which you (if you are a solicitor) may be eligible to apply upon gaining Accreditation.

The Bar Council has also approved the course and recognises the Accreditation. Similarly, the Legal Services Commission recognises our accreditation, and the LSC Funding Code Manual now includes the School’s name on the list of approved Mediator Providers, entitling them to ‘Legal Aid’ funding (see the LSC Manual extract in the brochure). As a result of this, the Judicial Studies Board has included the School’s name in the list of Mediator Providers circulated to all Judges and Courts in the UK.

Is there work available for a mediator and how will I be able to find it?

There are a huge number of disputes out there crying out for mediation. The courts have a backlog of a large variety of commercial and other disputes; the NHS has a huge backlog of Clinical Negligence cases awaiting resolution; Schools and Parents are increasingly in conflict; employers and employees would benefit from mediation of their disagreements, without the need to apply to an Employment Tribunal. Housing, police, education, transport, the armed services, are all areas where disputes abound, and where there is an increasing need for accredited mediators.

The SPCP is an academic institution and not a mediator provider. Nevertheless, the School tries to assist its graduates in finding mediation work, although it is not easy.  Graduates from the course are put in touch with and are eligible to join a number of Mediation provider organisations. These organisations may charge an annual fee in order to place you on their panels of mediators. Then, when they receive an inquiry for a mediator, they search their panel database, and match the most appropriate mediator to the dispute. The School has made arrangements with The ADR Group, a provider of mediations throughout the UK, InterMediation, a major London company specialising in marketing mediators and C.A.L.M. (Confidential & Local Mediation) a voluntary organisation specialising in London Local Authority mediations. Hopefully these and other mediation panels will provide the School’s accredited mediators with a realistic prospect of securing mediation work.

SPCP has a database of all graduates from our courses, which members of the public can access directly through the this website. This will provide a unique opportunity for our alumni to place material information about themselves on the web, and for potential mediation clients to investigate , select and contact them directly for the purposes of, hopefully, appointing them as a mediator in their dispute.

Otherwise, it is up to you to market yourself. How much work you secure will depend upon how actively or aggressively you market yourself. If you have a special expertise in a particular area, or a niche market to whom you can promote yourself as a mediator, and you send a brochure to those within that market, or mail shot all insurers, lawyers, accountants, Citizens Advice Bureaux, schools, hospitals, police stations etc.

How much can a mediator earn?

The tariff fee for a mediator, as set out in current Ministry of Justice guidelines, is £1,700 plus VAT for a full day’s mediation, including preparation, in a civil case involving a dispute with a value between £15,000 and £50,000. Cases involving lesser sums or mediated over less than one full day will attract a lower fee. Payment of this fee is usually shared by the parties. Most mediations take only one day, but the fee will be higher or lower as governed by a number of factors, such as the complexity of the dispute, the amount of reading and preparation that the mediator will be expected to do prior to the mediation, and whether the mediator is required to undertake any administrative duties, such as photocopying or sending papers from one party to the other.

Will I be equipped to do Family Mediation?

The course will adequately train you to deal with mediation in a family dispute context. The counselling element of the mediation training is closely connected with ‘couple therapy’ in which the psychotherapists are well experienced. However, in order to act as a Family Mediator in a publicly-funded litigation context, the mediator will require accreditation from a body approved by the UK College of Family Mediators. At the time of going to print, the School does not yet have that approval, although we are currently working on this. Please enquire further with the School.

Are SPCP Mediators entitled to Legal Aid Funding?

If parties in litigation do not have sufficient means to pay for their legal representation, they may be eligible for Legal Aid. If in the course of that litigation they chose to mediate, they can obtain funding for the costs of a mediator, but provided only that the mediator is accredited by one of the 5 organisations listed in the Legal Services Commission manual – SPCP is one of the five organisations listed.

What other courses are available on the market and how do they compare with the School’s course?

There are probably around half-a-dozen mediation course providers in the UK. The market leader is clearly CEDR (Centre For Effective Mediation) a very professional and efficient organisation which led the market from the late eighties. Their courses are 5-day courses, generally much more expensive then the SPCP, and are very much more commercially-oriented. The ADR Group are another well-recognised mediation training organisation., who with others such as the British Academy of Experts, ADR Chambers, Mediation UK all provide mediation training courses of varying lengths and costs.

The SPCP course has, in our view, the edge on all the other courses, as it uniquely includes training in the ‘psychological’ underpinning of conflict, which is so important when dealing with parties locked in combat. We demonstrate throughout the course how and why parties get themselves into dispute situations, and we analyse the strategies they adopt when trying to extricate themselves from those positions. Consequently, the Accreditation given by the School is swiftly becoming acknowledged as providing a unique quality of “psychotherapeutically trained” mediators.

As stated before, the unanimous feedback from course participants is that the psychotherapeutic model of our training provides our graduates with an additional insight into the psychology of conflict, giving them an edge over mediators trained elsewhere. The skills acquired on our course are also proving invaluable in all areas of practice, in dealing with clients, employees, or witnesses, as well as in conflict avoidance.