Apart from fighting just for the sake of it, or the questionable morality of giving priority to the rules rather than the needs of the litigants, relying on adjudication simply takes too long and costs too much. In the words of former Supreme Court of Canada Justice Estey: “Disputes, unlike wine, do not improve by aging. Many things happen to a cause and to parties in a dispute by the simple passage of time, and almost none of them are good. Delay in settlement or disposal of conflicting claims is a primary enemy of Justice and peace in the community.”

The Queen's Bench judges in Alberta agreed. They wanted to achieve better results, not just reduce court costs and delays. According to Associate Chief Justice Rooke:

ADR began as a response to purported weaknesses of litigation and the lack of institutional alternatives for settling disputes. One of its harshest critics, Yale Professor Owen Fiss, stated that the ADR movement mistakenly assumed that settlement and reconciliation would always produce better results than litigation and adjudication (Fiss 1984).