The master of the rolls has called for mediation to become part of every lawyer’s training from university, but warned against an overzealous approach to alternative dispute resolution.

Speaking at the Civil Mediation Council’s annual conference, Lord Neuberger (pictured) said: ‘If mediation and other forms of ADR are to take their proper place in our justice system, they have to be part of every lawyer’s legal education.’

In order to embed a culture change so that mediation becomes ‘litigation’s twin’, it is not only those already in the profession who need to be educated about its use and benefits, but also students, he added.

‘From their first lectures, students should gain a proper understanding that a knowledge and appreciation of mediation and ADR is as necessary a part of what it means to be a good lawyer as a knowledge of our adversarial system and substantive law,’ he said.

But Neuberger cautioned against overstating the virtues of mediation, noting that ‘zeal’ for a form of dispute resolution ‘is not healthy’ and ‘smacks of fanaticism’.

Neuberger said education should put mediation in context as one means of resolving disputes, emphasising both the value of mediation and when and how to conduct it, as well as when not to mediate and when to cease mediation.