11 continuation of the pre-trial conference, but is an event scheduled separately at the request of the parties.⁴⁷ In 1996, the CBA Task Force identified two key features of the Alberta mini-trial: “volunt ary participation” (al though as early as 1993 there was talk of a “bindi ng mini-trial”); and,  as in the commercial mini-trial, “fl exible design of procedure tailored to the dispute”⁴⁸ at an advance meeting of the judge and parties (or, more commonly, counsel on their behalf). Usually, the mini-trial is held in a conference room at the courthouse.⁴⁹ The mini-trial has been credited with having “been used succ essfully to facilitate the settlement of complex cases that would have taken months to litigate.”⁵⁰ 2.  Facilitative judge [33] The judicial mini-trial initiated judges and lawyers to the idea of a judicial role in settlement. Before long, influenced by developments in the United States and the requirement in Alberta’ s pre-trial conference rule to explore settlement possibilities, judges in Alberta’ s Court of Queen’s  Bench (the trial court having comprehensive inherent jurisdiction) began to experiment with the use of other ADR techniques. [34] No doubt, judges are adept in the art of persuasion at pre-trial conferences and may exert an element of judicious coercion in the name of the management of litigation. However, in Alberta, JDRs (as the more recent emanations of the judicial mini-trial came to be known) have remained separately scheduled, and so distinct from the pre-trial conference.⁵¹ Like the judicial mini-trial that preceded them, they are an event initiated at the request of the parties who have some say in the choice of the judge. The JDR is held in a conference room in the courthouse, the process is relatively informal, the discussions are privileged, and no record is kept. It is in this context that the experimentation with ADR techniques has expanded. The procedural flexibility has led judges to develop their own individual “sty les” of J DR. JDR today ranges from the tightly-structured mini-trial to a loosely-structured conference in which a judge may mediate, meet with the parties individually (caucus), give an opinion on the strengths and weakness of each party’ s case, predict the outcome at trial, and press the parties to reach and sign of an agreement before the session is over. The process followed by judges engaged in JDR is wide open. The judge may begin using one ADR process, then flip to another and another, sometimes in a seemingly random way. The judge may mediate (including caucus) after giving an opinion, or move from mediation to an opinion and so forth.