London’s courts are clogged. Two veteran lawyers aim to ease the backlog

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Two veteran London lawyers are launching a new mediation business, a bid to speed up resolutions to legal disputes amid notoriously long delays in bring lawsuits to trial.  

Michael Lerner, partner at Lerners LLP who has been practising law for 50 years, is retiring from the firm Dec. 31 and launching a new mediation venture with long-time London litigator David MacKenzie. 

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“Lawyers have been looking for alternate means to resolve disputes. Mediation is, quite frankly, the fastest and the cheapest,” Lerner said.  

“There’s nothing pleasant about a lawsuit. It’s something that weighs on people’s minds daily. Anything we can do to alleviate that problem and expedite that process, is welcome.”  

Lerner MacKenzie Mediation is officially launching in January 2025 and is already booking dates with clients early in the new year, Lerner said.

The new business will handle a broad range of litigation, from personal injury and employment matters to construction or contract disputes. It will not deal with family law issues, which are matters best left to mediators with specific experience in that field, Lerner said. 

Mediators resolve legal disputes by facilitating a back-and-forth between opponents with the ultimate aim of coming to an agreement. They are external, impartial individuals hired by the parties. Unlike arbitrators, mediators do not make a decision on which side wins.  

In London, mediation is a voluntary step in the litigation process, but the province does mandate mediation for cases in Toronto, Ottawa and Windsor. 

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Civil court matters, such as lawsuits, can take years to litigate since they are lower priority than other types of legal issues handled by Ontario courts. Owing to their seriousness, criminal cases are dealt with first, Lerner said. Family law matters rank second in priority for courts, he said.

Pandemic-related backlog has made the situation even worse for people pursuing lawsuits.  

“The failure of courts to give people who are involved in litigation a speedy trial is really egregious,” Lerner said. 

“If you were to come into my office today and say you’d like to advance a claim, I’d say to you my reasonable expectation is that you’ll see the inside of a courtroom some time in 2029, likely not sooner and quite possibly later than that.”  

Sometimes people get locked into a mindset that the courtroom is the only place to resolve a legal dispute, MacKenzie said.  

“A lot of times matters are capable of being settled, but it takes the courtroom door to make people compromise. It really shouldn’t be that way,” said MacKenzie, who will keep running his own firm in addition to his mediation work. 

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“If the message is out there about why mediation is such a good idea, I think it will take some of the pressure off the courts and give people their lives back.” 

MacKenzie said he has always been interested in mediation, adding opposing counsel and close friends have suggested he would be a good fit. 

Lerner said he gained experience in mediation through his work as vice-chair of the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal, a position he held for 10 years. Some of his colleagues encouraged him to pursue work in mediation too, he said. 

While it will be difficult to move on from Lerners LLP after five decades, Lerner said he’s happy to make way for a younger generation of lawyers to make their mark on London’s legal scene.  

“This is a way of staying involved (in London’s legal community) and maintaining contact with my Lerners colleagues,” he said. “I’m looking forward to it. It’s a new adventure.”  

jbieman@postmedia.com 

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