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…

The modern mediation movement was established in Singapore in the mid-1990s. I say modern because historically, the population of Singapore (both indigenous and migrant) practiced their own forms of mediation. With colonization came the English common law and court system that unfortunately saw the reduction, if not demise, of these local forms of mediation. When…

One of the privileges and perils of working as a mediator in Scotland is that we get a close-up view of developments in England and Wales. In an ideal world this should allow us (pop. 5 million) to learn from them (pop. 55 million): to pick the best innovations and avoid the failures. As I…

While the world becomes ever faster-paced, litigating business disputes are unchangeably slow. The recently published World Bank’s “Doing Business 2012: Doing Business in a More Transparent World” report shows that state court procedures in most countries remain lengthy, costly and complicated. Although this is not good news for anyone, as a side effect, the flaws…

Scotland sits on the north-west fringe of Europe, and is probably best known for whisky, rain and heroic failure on football and rugby pitches. While part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, many people don’t realise it has its own legal system. And why should they? Even English publications often talk…

1. Unlike the arbitral process where courts strive to distinguish between the concepts of a private process and a confidential process, the mediation process is indisputably and inherently confidential. But what happens if one party breaches this confidentiality during the mediation? In formal terms, can the act by one party in breach be treated as…

The economic challenges facing society have finally hit the civil justice system. Courthouses have seen huge cutbacks, and San Francisco has all but shutdown civil jury trials. No one thought this was going to happen to such a venerable institution as the jury system, but in these difficult times, nothing is sacred. Reduced budgets translate…