Most mediators I know graduated from the Facilitative School of Mediation – and we could spend much ink here debating exactly what that means but to my mind we were essentially taught to own the process and butt out of the outcome.

Recently there have been a number of calls for mediators to do more – more what is perhaps a little unclear, but certainly the market wants more something.

Just last month the IMI International Corporate Users ADR Survey polled 76 in-house dispute resolution Counsel from North America and Europe with over two thirds of the responders being from corporations with 10,000 plus employees.

Responding to the injunction that “Mediators should not be purely faci [...]

If I look back 10 years ago I can notice that mediation has had an evolution which at that time, we could but hope for. From the random pilot projects and the search “laboratories” of this activity, in the year 2013, mediation has become a freestanding profession and even a social and professional phenomenon.

Mediation is a conflicts resolution method and humanity has begun to become more and more aware of its efficiency. This process has determined remarkable progress at the legislative, institutional, and professional construction level. We can notice that mediation has been integrated by Governs, corporations or by people in their own conflicts resolution policies.

Pursuant to artic [...]

You may have seen a post on 17 April 2012 exploring the thinking behind the Commercial Mediation Group, an affiliation that aims to give a voice to the users of commercial mediation services. The post explained what the CMG had been up to since its inception and communicated the results of a survey on topical mediation issues.

Since then, the CMG has been active in a number of areas and continues to generate considerable interest and support from the mediation community. This post gives a brief update on recent months.

Mediation speed dating
On 19 September 2012 Linklaters on behalf of the Commercial Mediation Group hosted a “mediation speed dating” event, giving litigators and mediators [...]

Down here in New Zealand it’s high summer and most of the country will spend until the end of January at the beach.

I remember, when I was still at my law firm 10 years ago, the feeling of brief respite at this time of year before having to put on my boots again and trudge back up that mountain they called Budget.

That image has long disappeared for me, but ever since Rick Weiler was brave enough to reflect on his three failed mediations and Jeff Krivis was prepared to post on the death of mediation in California, I have been circling this piece on mediator fatigue knowing that these kinds of topics are risky demons to raise.

But as we start a new year, the time feels right.

It’s not as if [...]

Mediation is often portrayed as a useful vehicle for disputes between equals, where parties can be expected to speak for themselves and neither has significant power over the other. Critics, and even supporters, become more sceptical when it comes to less symmetrical situations. Complaints against professionals are one such category. The professional is seen to have power, status, authority and, usually, cash while complainers lack the substantive knowledge to hold professionals to account: they don’t know what they don’t know.

And yet one of the more interesting innovations in Scotland has been the embedding in legislation of just such a scheme. The Legal Profession and Legal Aid (Sco [...]

Over the years, the Romanian people got used to the transition state. We are now crossing a difficult period for all of us, that of financial deprivation. People divide what they have left, dreaming to become exclusive owner of each inch of land, of each piece of wood of their old houses, of every brick and tile that make up the “property” of their deceased parents.

The lawyers are asked to help and the trials dealing with inheritance division increase their number every day. These cases were „the bread” of many lawyers, but, given their duration (“1 to 3 years” that sounds as a punishment for all the people involved), we tend, naturally, to get rid of them quickly in a more efficient mann [...]

Singapore was the location of an ADR conference over 4-5 October 2012. The conference was entitled “The 5Cs of ADR: Collaboration-Communication-Consensus-Cooperation-Conclusion” and was jointly organized by the Subordinate Courts of Singapore, the Singapore Mediation Centre, the Law Society of Singapore, the Supreme Court of Singapore, the Singapore Academy of Law, the Ministry of Law and the Community Mediation Centres. The conference saw a gathering of academics, practitioners and service providers from, inter alia, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, the Maldives and Fiji to share developments about ADR and to discuss ways to move th [...]

Mediators often talk about the power of framing their own language and reframing the language of parties and others in mediation settings. For example, mediators may frame their comments in neutral, constructive and future-focused language. They may reframe party statements to detoxify offensive or destructive language or to create a shift from the negative to the positive, from the past to the future, from interests to positions, and so on.
In this blog I want to offer three examples of the power of (re)framing from the perspective of negotiators in a mediation setting, that is parties and their professional advisers. While my comments are equally as relevant to (re)framing by mediators, I [...]

Since I was invited to contribute to Kluwer´s Mediation Blog I decided to follow the line of writing about all the possibilities of mediation in the corporate Brazilian market.

This month would not be different. I invested a lot of time chasing data and information about the uses of mediation in the Intellectual Property sector. This theme has become a hot issue in Brazil recently, with a lot of publicity, and as I really appreciate the subject, it looked like the perfect post for me.

As I sat in front of the computer, with my cup of coffee and a lot of researched material to write this article, I started to wonder about all the good things that happened to me this last week and, all of a [...]

What is the possible role of the lawyer in a commercial mediation? How the lawyer should interact with his client in the mediation process? Here are some thoughts for using the lawyer as a positive element in the mediation involving a commercial dispute.

Before mediation

The lawyer should, as far as possible, facilitate transactional solutions and engage in a trial only after he had realized that an out-of-court settlement is not possible (such a recommandation is contained in the Code of Ethics of the Geneva Bar Association). In this respect, the use of mediation should be freely and openly discussed between the lawyer and his client, with a view to consider it as a possible and useful meth [...]