If not “Covid-19”, then “Home Office” is going to be the topic of the year 2020. Apart from our family management skills, home office work first and foremost challenges our ability to communicate via long-distance means. Even before the pandemic, the increased awareness towards climate change had led to initiatives for a more intensive use…
Events last Friday have resulted in a harrowing few days for we mediators forced to move our practice online as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. We’ve all been using Zoom. Zoom immediately emerged as the “go-to” platform for video mediation for the simple reason it offered “break-out rooms”, a function inexplicably absent in FaceTime,…
For once, I seem to have time. No travel, no trips out, no long walks on the hills. Some zoom mediations, granted, but still much more time. And with that, I find myself reflecting on the significance of time in mediation. Time is a major feature in mediation. Indeed, we ourselves have promoted the process…
Anyone managing international business disputes needs to understand the Singapore Convention on Mediation. Not just its terms and limitations, but the reasons why certain matters are included and why others are omitted, as well as how to interpret and apply it. All mediated business settlements with an international angle that are concluded from now on…
I’ve mentioned the use of Decision Trees by mediators previously on this blog. Here and here and here and here. So why do I keep banging on about them? Well, first, because I believe they are such an indispensable tool in the commercial mediator’s toolkit. But the reason I thought it appropriate to return to…
Twice today I’ve found myself responding to mediator reflections in these terms: the money’s not about the money. Both cases involved financial negotiation, even haggling, but that’s deceptive. The key to settlement lay not in the realm of calculation and rationality but in the more opaque social world of face, punishment, justice and emotion. In…
“Does the United Nations Convention on International Settlement Agreements Resulting from Mediation (“Singapore Convention”) apply to investor-state disputes?” This intriguing question was deliberated recently at George Washington University Law School by a star-studded panel comprising of the Hon’ble Judge Charles N. Brower (Twenty Essex Street Chambers, London), Ms. Frauke Nitschke (Legal Counsel, ICSID) and Mr….
Photo credit: Creative Commons Jean M.Mas 2/2007 Although my mediation training made no mention of it, 32 years of mediating have taught me that mediations generally unfold over two stages: Stage 1: “Who Did What to Whom”? Here parties (or their lawyers) follow the ritual of naming, blaming and claiming – recounting facts, providing evidence…
I have recently been approached to enrol myself in an investor-state mediation training programme and also to speak at one of the sessions. That triggers off my deeper thoughts on the topic of investor-state mediation and related issues. This blog is an attempt to share my thoughts so that fellow mediation practitioners may consider whether…
Why does impasse occur in mediation? In my experience as a commercial mediator, impasse most often flows from a combination of cognitive biases and flawed risk assessments. Cognitive Biases The human mind works in mysterious ways. Research in psychology and economic behaviour continues to uncover myriad ways in which the mind deviates from norms or…
