Ever since I started Law School, and for some years throughout my legal career, I was trained to work with the Win-Lose negotiation approach. Our legal culture glorifies the winners, but lacks conciliation alternatives. It provides no other alternative rather than seeking victory at the expense of the other parties. However, as soon as I…
[Author’s Warning: This entry involves references to and discussions about the system of Cartesian Coordinates and how it might assist mediators in reality testing and reframing. Readers with a Math Phobia are advised to proceed with cautious abandonment.] [Author’s postscript: As I finish writing this, it becomes increasingly clear to me that some readers may…
Most mediators I know graduated from the Facilitative School of Mediation – and we could spend much ink here debating exactly what that means but to my mind we were essentially taught to own the process and butt out of the outcome. Recently there have been a number of calls for mediators to do more – more what is…
“If we listen attentively, we shall hear amid the uproar of empires and nations, the faint fluttering of wings, the gentle stirring of life and hope. Some say this hope lies in a nation, others,in a man. I believe, rather, that it is awakened, revived, nourished by millions of solitary individuals whose deeds and words…
It is trite that one of key tasks of a mediator is to sort out what Patton, Stone and Heen in their book “Difficult Conversations” refer to as the “What Happened” conversation. Although they write about this and two other conversations in the context of negotiation, their insights are pertinent to mediators as well. One…
A few years ago, the mediation world was alight with gossip about the proposed launch of IMI, the International Mediation Institute (see www.IMImediation.org if you have never heard of it). Proponents and opponents in equal measure gathered either to welcome a fresh initiative, or to man the barricades against an attack on cherished turf. The…
A new study of dispute resolution practices in Fortune 1,000 corporations shows that many large companies are using binding arbitration less often and relying more on mediated negotiation and other approaches aimed at resolving disputes informally, quickly and inexpensively. The 2011 survey of corporate counsel developed by researchers at Cornell University’s Scheinman Institute on Conflict…
Since 2010, when the Brazilian National Council of Justice (CNJ), the agency that controls and manages the quality of civil services rendered by the Brazilian Judiciary Power, issued Resolution no. 125 , the mediation market in Brazil became considerably more active. This new Public Policy provided instructions on the proper handling of conflicts within the…
[Author’s Note: I am grateful to Ms. Melissa Teo whose journal ruminations led me to the random thoughts that follow] I teach mediation skills at the National University of Singapore Faculty of Law and it has always been something that I have found tremendously fulfilling. Apart from influencing generations of lawyers to consider the resolution…
In a previous posting I looked at Hong Kong’s new Mediation Ordinance, which came into force on 1 January 2013. This legislative activity comes hot on the heels of a major revision of the Hong Kong Arbitration Ordinance which came into effect in 2011. Given the increasing interest in multi-tiered dispute resolution (MDR) processes such…
