Trend Report | Part 1 - HiiL

Networks of paralegals
Namati.org is a Global Legal Empowerment Network that seeks to strengthen dialogue among
legal empowerment practitioners worldwide, focusing on strengthening paralegal programs. The
network provides a platform for the sharing of resources and experiences, such as paralegal
instruction materials, monitoring and evaluation tools, case management systems, and advocacy
strategies
Global Map of Network Organizations
These individuals conduct this role because their position in the community makes them respected and
authoritative, and often because they also have a track-record of producing results. When an individual
approaches a dispute resolution process they are mainly concerned with achieving an outcome, and
these individuals provide such an outcome with great regularity. How these individuals carry out these
conflict resolutions can still provide a lot of valuable information to help us to develop better, more
effective, conflict resolution processes.
“Both were happy over the result and both rose in the public estimation. My joy was
boundless. I had learnt the true practice of law. I had learnt to find out the better side of
human nature and to enter men’s hearts. I realised that the true function of the lawyer was
to unite parties driven asunder. The lesson was so indelibly burnt into me that a large part of
my time during the twenty years of my practice as lawyer was occupied in bringing about
private compromises of hundreds of cases. I lost nothing thereby – not even money,
certainly not my soul.”
Mahatma Gandhi
Lawyers Reaching Out To Needs of The Other Party
Professional lawyers are also increasingly using mediation techniques, taking the role of problem solver
more seriously and more actively, as some of them have always done (see the box with quote above).
In many countries approaches are developing where lawyers do not take their traditional roles as
advocates for one party, usually operating in an adversarial way, but operate more neutrally. Family
lawyers lead the way in integrating mediation skills in their working methods, but the same is true for
employment law and other areas where relationships have to be preserved, funds for legal services are
limited, and solutions that are seen as fair to both parties are more sustainable.
HiiL Trend Report – Part 1: Challenges and Promising Approaches 113