Thirty legal scholars, including people from Australia, South Korea and the United States, have converged on the University of Otago to take part in a two-day discussion on aspects of "adversarialism" in the legal system.
The "Australia-New Zealand Legal Ethics Colloquium", which began on Thursday, is being hosted by the University of Otago Legal Issues Centre, based in the university Faculty of Law.
Conference organisers said clients did not always want, or need, a gladiatorial contest and the gathering would consider "new foundations for legal processes and lawyers' ethics".
Centre director Prof Kim Economides, who jointly chairs the colloquium organising committee with Associate Prof Selene Mize, said "alternative dispute resolution" principles, focusing on conciliation rather than conflict, had already been absorbed into the mainstream court system and were also reflected in modern legal education, including through the Otago faculty.
Colloquium participants were focusing on what kind of ethics were required for deciding matters through alternative dispute resolution.
