I am very glad to start today a 4 posts serie with my fellow Gustavo Carneiro, a lawyer and mediator who holds a Public Policy degree, analyzing the new brazilian General Data Protection Law, which will come into force in August 2020 and its application for ODR. Online Mediation and other ODR methods are getting…

The Dilemma: At an initial private meeting with a lawyer and his lay client in a mediation, it became obvious to the mediator that he had previously mediated in a matter which was related to the present dispute, the outcome of which was not known to the present parties. In the mediator’s view, it had…

Confidentiality of mediation encourages parties to speak freely and openly. This is because they do not need to fear (or much less fear; ex natura confidentiality protections are never ironclad) that their words could be used against them when revealed to an outsider to the mediation process, such as a judge in a court or…

What makes good mediation law? For those of you who have been following the plot, you will recognise this as the second in a series of three posts introducing what is now called the RRR — Regulatory Robustness Rating for mediation jurisdictions. You may also notice the name change. Yes, what originated as the Mediation…

I begin with two poetic images. One is from an 8th century Taoist poem – I asked the boy beneath the pines. He said, “The master’s gone alone Herb-picking somewhere on the mount, Cloud-hidden, whereabouts unknown.” [Chia Tao (777-841)] And the other, more recent, from W H Auden’s poem “Law Like Love”: And always the…

This post was prepared in cooperation with Bogdan Matei. Neutrality is one of the keystone concepts in the mediation process. When the mediator or the parties consider that the mediator’s neutrality is affected, a conflict of interest appears. It is well known that when a conflict of interests appears, in respect to the ethical rules…

This is where I did my best work in Christmas week – in the twilight zone between the joint session room to the right of the water cooler and the private caucus room off to the left by the green bins. Corridors can be furtive and risky spaces on mediation days – ‘don’t ask me…