Nowadays, court hearings play a central part in Dutch civil procedures. Until recently, little was known about how these hearings took place and how the parties involved experienced them. From the perspective of the parties involved, it is better if judges do not only resolve disputes legally, but also act as a conflictmanager. For this purpose, a method called ‘Conflictoplossing op maat’ (‘Customized conflict resolution’) was introduced by Machteld Pel (former director of The Netherlands court-connected mediation agency). In this paper I discuss the method as well as the results from an experiment in practice. In short, the results indicate that the method is, though not easy to implement, useful to improve the hearings of court procedures in disputes between civilians.

An interview was held with Lex Penders, judge in the court of Utrecht. Subject of the interview was the role of the judge as regierechter (judge-conflictmanager) in the pilot project Customized Conflict Resolution. He talks about his experiences in the pilot and his ideas for future improvements in court hearings.