ABSTRACT
It is commonplace for legal practitioners to speak of litigation as a dance or battle (Gilson and Mnookin 1994; Mason 1999). However, critics of adversarialism have called into question the nature of the formal legal game (Menkel-Meadow 1996). In particular, litigation practices have been denounced for exacerbating differences between litigants (Susskind and Ozawa 1985: 145), promoting zero-sum solutions (Gordon 2000: 378), failing to address issues underlying conflict (Bush and Folger 1994), doing little to advance the future relationship of the parties in dispute (Susskind and Ozawa 1985), and being costly and inefficient.
