Absolutely. Many judges in our Family Court system are rightly demanding that mediation occur before people even appear in the courtroom. I was a practitioner of family law only long enough to realize that it wasn't an area of law I wanted to pursue, in large part because of the confrontational nature and the fact that when children are involved the heightened emotion very often skews the outcome.
In your example about unrepresented accused, mediation would give us the ability to sit down and try...to the greatest extent possible before going before a judge and making hard, harsh decisions that may have unintended consequences, particularly in terms of parental orders, access to children, access to family, or a move that could dislocate a family. These are life-altering decisions to say the least, and the mediation methodology has exponentially impacted the way Family Court operates and the way we are moving away from the strict confrontational approach that has quite frankly not worked well within our family justice system.