With an eye on the ground realities of how the Indian legal system operates, Sahai & Co. makes a conscious effort to ensure that prior to approaching any court and/or tribunal on behalf of its clients, alternative dispute resolution mechanisms such as mediation, conciliation and arbitration are visited and if possible, satisfactory resolution of the dispute outside the legal system itself without the court’s involvement, is attained.

While all of the three, i.e. mediation, conciliation and arbitration are effective ways of resolving disputes without involving the formal legal institutions, they do differ slightly from each other. In mediation, the parties are brought together before a mediator, who being an independent third party assists both sides to come up with a solution jointly to their disputes and reach an outcome which is acceptable to both sides. Conciliation is similar to mediation but unlike mediation, in a conciliation proceeding, at some point of time, both the parties will request the conciliator to come up with a non-binding settlement proposal. In both mediation and conciliation, the final decision to accept the proposal and settle the matter, lies with the parties.

This is however, not the case in arbitration proceedings wherein an arbitral tribunal is appointed by the parties themselves instead of approaching the courts. The arbitral tribunal, after hearing both the sides, issues an order which is binding on the parties and non-appealable.

The advantages of ADR are speedy resolution of disputes, the procedure adopted is more cost effective and flexible since ADR does not have to adhere to court procedures which tend to be lengthy and complicated and finally, the resolution invariably is amicable and animosity is avoided. We, at Sahai & Co., encourage our clientele to avoid litigation if a satisfactory settlement is possible by way of ADR due to the mental and financial strain it can cause.

We have significant experience in both domestic as well as cross-border ADRs and our services can be broadly categorized as below:

• Representing clients in mediation and conciliation proceedings as well as advising clients on such matters
• Representing clients in domestic arbitration proceedings as well as international arbitration proceedings
• Representing clients before the relevant court for enforcing arbitral awards, challenging enforcement of arbitral awards, appointment of arbitrators and other arbitration related matters
• Advising clients in relation to venue of the arbitration as well as procedural and substantive law which should be made applicable
• Drafting arbitration agreements and clauses