Srđan Šimac
Mediator and Judge, High Commercial Court of the Republic of Croatia, President of the Croatian Mediation Association, Zagreb

Ph.D., a Judge and former President of the High Commercial Court of the Republic of Croatia; President of Croatian Mediation Association; Mediation Pioneer, Founder of Court Mediation; Judge-Mediator and Mediator; an Arbiter, a Mediation Trainer, Lecturer, Speaker, and Promoter. An author of many articles on mediation and Ph.D. thesis – “Mediation as Generator of Change in Judicial System and Legal Profession.” Former President of SEEMF; board member of GEMME; JAMS International Weinstein Fellow; a member of Mediation Panels: ICSID, CEDR, Prime Dispute, VIAC, JAMS International, in Moscow and ADR Partners Belgrade. CEDR Award 2012 Winner for ADR and Civil Justice Innovation; Carrier of Croatian Mediation Association Award 2013, and Slovenian Association of Mediators Award 2016

Panelist, Speaker
Croatia
Zagreb
Mostar Mediation Conference 2020

Mediation and Justice as Two Complementary Worlds

As a synonym for the ADR movement, mediation has brought new winds to the world of dispute resolution. Mediation can generate change in the justice system and the legal profession. It has the potential to free judicial systems and the legal profession from the limitations that burden them and those that further burden the parties to the dispute, the public, and society as a whole.

The way of empowering parties to disputes that are only important to them, their active participation in resolving them and taking much greater control over their disputes in litigation, and full control over them in mediations, have evolutionary potential. However, these approaches' aim is not to replace the traditional dispute resolution system but to improve and advance it.

These are two different systems of public (formal) and private (informal) justice. Each of them and both together play significant and complementary social roles. No modern society can do without these systems, becoming integral and equal parts of a single dispute resolution system. With the help of legal professionals of a new kind, such a new dispute resolution system will enable the law and justice to become much closer than ever to the real needs of citizens and society as a whole.