Pakistan’s courts carried 2,371,389 pending cases on 31 December 2024, 1,965,172 of them before the district judiciary, according to the Law and Justice Commission of Pakistan. This paper examines whether mediation should become a mandatory step before civil litigation and, if so, in what form. It adopts a doctrinal, analytical and comparative method, drawing on statutes, case law, official statistics, reform reports and scholarly literature. It analyses the Alternative Dispute Resolution Act 2017, which applies only to the Islamabad Capital Territory, alongside the provincial ADR statutes, Section 89-A and Order X, Rule 1A of the Code of Civil Procedure 1908, and the Mediation Practice Direction (Civil) Rules 2023. It then compares three models: Turkey’s sequenced, statute-based pre-action mandate; Italy’s mandate, struck down in 2012 and reintroduced in narrower form in 2013; and Singapore’s model of judicial encouragement, a presumption of ADR and court-recordable settlements. The paper finds that Pakistan’s framework, although framed in mandatory terms, operates as mandatory referral with a party-consent opt-out, and that no official data record disposals through mediation. The comparators show that sequencing matters: a mandate introduced sector by sector, with safeguards, withstands legal challenge and builds capacity, while an over-broad mandate invites invalidation and resistance. The paper also identifies two institutional gaps: the absence of a national mediator-accreditation registry and the lack of a fast, distinct enforcement route for mediated settlements. It recommends a phased, sector-by-sector transition from consent-based referral to a pre-action mediation requirement, beginning with commercial disputes and followed by labour and then general civil disputes, supported by accreditation, case tracking, constitutional safeguards and harmonisation with the reconciliation stages of the Family Courts Act 1964.