Mediation has long been used as a method of resolving disputes. Indeed, the practice of combining mediation and arbitration by the same neutral has been traced back to ancient Greece and Ptolemaic Egypt[1]. In his paper “Varieties of Dispute Processing”, presented to the 1976 Pound Conference, Harvard Professor Frank E.A. Sander proposed that, instead of…

by Dr. Michael Komuczky, attorney at law at Lansky, Ganzger, Goeth, Frankl + Partner (Vienna, Austria), and Sima Ghaffari, ICC YAF Representative and associate at Ferdowsi Legal (Tehran, Iran) There has been a significant increase in the debate on multi-tiered or hybrid dispute resolution clauses, as can be seen in this Blog or the Kluwer…

As mentioned in my last blog , the UK Civil Justice Council, in its June 2021 Report on  Compulsory ADR , endorsed the idea, contrary to the ruling in the notorious Halsey case, that unwilling parties in dispute may lawfully and appropriately be compelled to participate in a DR process such as mediation. (As an…

While it is obvious that law is significant in legal disputes, how the law is used is not so obvious. This piece uses Oliver Wendell Holmes’s famous definition of the law as “prophecies of what the courts will do in fact,” rather than rules expressed in statutes, case law etc. It discusses two aspects of…

Graffiti commenting on truth and its usefulness today

I started mediating in my early 30s, surely old enough to know the difference between truth and fiction. Yet after a couple of years I began to say, first to myself then to my friends, that the concept of truth was ‘no longer useful’ in my work. What did I mean and how did I…

Hot off the heels of the Singapore Convention, The Singapore International Mediation Centre (SIMC) and the Japan International Mediation Center (JIMC) on 12 September 2020 signed a Memorandum of Understanding to operate a joint protocol that provides cross-border businesses, including companies along the Singapore-Japan corridor, with an economical, expedited and effective route for resolving commercial…

What is the SIMC COVID-19 Protocol? The Singapore International Mediation Centre (SIMC) has just launched the SIMC COVID-19 Protocol to provide businesses with an expedited, economical and effective route to resolve any international commercial disputes during the COVID-19 pandemic period. SIMC’s Covid-19 protocol is a great example of a leading mediation service provider reaching out…

When disputants successfully resolve their differences at mediation, it is good practice to record the details of their settlement, with clarity and precision, in the form of a mediated settlement agreement (MSA). Ideally, they should also provide a clause for dispute resolution (for instance, a choice of court, arbitration, mediation or multi-tier dispute resolution agreement),…

Are agreements to mediate enforceable? The short (and incomplete) answer is: yes, they may be provided they are drafted appropriately. In this post we review a recent English judgment which sets outs guidelines for the enforceability of agreements to mediate under English law. In August 2019, the Technology and Construction Court of the Queen’s Bench…

Stop apologising

(This blog is adapted from a longer version published by Prof John Lande as part of Theories of Change for the Dispute Resolution Movement: Actionable Ideas to Revitalize Our Movement. The Theory of Change symposium asked mediators and scholars to think big about their dreams and visions for the future, and was recently published on…