Well, the New Year is a time for reflections, making new resolutions and fresh starts. In Hong Kong the 1st of January 2013 saw a fresh start for the mediation regulatory regime with the coming into force of the Mediation Ordinance (MO), which I wrote about last month. But it’s not just the MO, which…

In June 2012 the Hong Kong Legislative Council passed the Mediation Ordinance (MO), the first piece of legislation on mediation in Hong Kong SAR. The MO was a much awaited and highly anticipated law and some mediation advocates have been disappointed in what they see as much ado about nothing. After all the MO appears…

The title of “Mediator” In Switzerland there are two main areas of intervention of the mediation and therefore two broad categories of mediators: the so-called “conventional” mediators and those who have a quasi-“judicial” function; the latter only intervene in the case where mediation replaces the judicial conciliation required in most civil litigation pursuant to Articles…

We mediators need to market our wares, just like the fruiterer at my local Sunday Farmers’ Market when he calls out prices from behind his stall. Increasingly some mediators are choosing to do this by the numbers – advertising how many mediations they have completed and what level of success they have achieved. For instance, this…

Over the past few weeks I have been following a discussion on LinkedIn around mediator certification which has been going on non-stop for no less than four months. The question of whether the regulation of mediators is good, bad or indifferent seems to go straight to the heart of issues surrounding our identity as mediators…

The first mediation course is a special moment that each of us holds in our hearts and it represents the foundation of every mediator. The transformational process that we all go through during our training as mediators is materialized by the change in our attitude towards conflict and how to solve them. When we go…

In my capacity as a trainer and educator of mediators, I am frequently asked about entry into the mediation profession: “Once I pass my accreditation assessment, I want to become a full-time mediator…” The mediation training market continues to boom, confirming a continuing strong interest in mediation as a career path. However the supply of…

As I sat down at my desk the other day to think about what to blog about this month, e- mails and text messages suddenly started pinging into my inbox giving me the rather exciting news that the Minister for Justice had just published the draft Mediation Bill, promised in the Programme for Government set…

Quality standards for the mediator? What conditions are needed for the successful outcome of a mediation? Without parties’ commitment to really resolve the conflict and settle the case, no success is possible. So commitment of the parties is a sine qua non. Still, we must also look at the mediator, who may be essential for…

As we head into a new year of mediation and managing conflict in the world it strikes me that, at least in this little corner of Europe, the discipline of mediation itself is at a crossroads. A combination of political and socio-economic circumstances and potential legal developments could lead to mediation taking a greater part…