Local bar associations and district judges participate in mediation trainings aimed at broadening understanding of mediation and its potential. However, ADR providers at the village level do not want to formalize links with the legal establishment. Now that the reformed village mediation system is successful, there is a desire on the part of the government to replace this ADR system with a network of local courts. The previous system of Conciliation Boards failed because the officials involved were vulnerable to local elites and corruption. The current mediation board system was established by high-level officials and is run as part of the judicial system, overseen by a Mediation Commission comprised of former Supreme Court and Appeals court justices.
Mediators are volunteers, and sometimes are also lawyers.
Educational outreach on ADR also extends to local bars and law schools. In practice, however, the mediation boards operate largely independently of the legal system. Acknowledging the problem that mediators and parties may not have a clear understanding of the laws relevant to their case, as well as the importance of continued support from the legal community, the mediation program is attempting to bring legal professionals into the system so that their advice can be more constructively integrated into the system. To this end, mediation trainers have organized workshops for students at the Sri Lanka Law College and sessions for local bar associations. UMG faces a number of vestiges of Soviet control, such as out-dated laws unfavorable to ADR, cultural barriers to sharing information necessary to successful mediation, as well as rigidity in some older judges who believe that there is no legal basis for mediation in Ukraine.