The good news is that the Romanian Government has taken a step towards availability for dialogue, communication and negotiation by regulating a mediation procedure between tax authorities and taxpayers. The not so good news is that there is no role provided for a mediator in this procedure called mediation, that in fact is negotiation. Once…

Time Limited Mediation

“It is pointless to do with more what can be done with fewer.” William of Ockham A colleague recently asked me to present a workshop to employment mediators on ‘Time Limited Mediation.’ Until that moment, like Molière’s bourgeois gentleman realising he’s been speaking prose all his life, it hadn’t occurred to me that this was…

Brexit negotiated!

In this blog I discuss the rise of ODR (online dispute resolution). I review recent developments including a live, online Brexit negotiation, which point to a mainstream future. I conclude that ODR will become an integral part of the justice system. When Frank Sander coined the term ‘Alternative Dispute Resolution’ his relatively modest proposal placed…

At a recent excellent conference hosted by Professor Ulla Glaesser at Viadrina University in Frankfurt (Oder), one of the workshop sessions focussed on the extent to which mediators can or should disclose or express their views when engaged in politically-related mediation work – or more generally. What a fascinating conversation we had. It was no…

This blog entry has its origins in two threads of conversation. First, as I write, we are just three weeks out from the 2018 Forum on Online Dispute Resolution, to be hosted by the NZ Centre for ICT Law and Auckland Law School. What has been an annual – even flagship – Forum is now…

On Thursday, August 30, 2018 the Canadian Federal Court of Appeal did the unthinkable. Its Judgement in Tsleil-Waututh Nation v. Canada (Attorney General), 2018 FCA 153 (CanLII) quashed approval of the $9.3-billion (CAN) Trans Mountain oil pipeline. The Canadian government announced last spring that it would purchase the Trans Mountain pipeline from Kinder Morgan Ltd….

The term “art disputes” encompasses a broad range of disputes in the area of art and cultural heritage. They may relate to copyright and moral rights, chain of title, restitution, acquisition, donation, loan and deposit, insurance of art works, art as collateral in financing transactions, art fairs, digitalization, misappropriation of traditional cultural expressions, and several…

(This post is being republished because of technical problems when it was first published.) One of the key debates among mediators centres on the word ‘evaluation’. I’ve written about this before – see Has the evaluative label outlived its usefulness? I’m sure many readers are familiar, even bored, with the claimed polarity between facilitative and…

The hills above Edinburgh, Scotland, were bursting with the splendor of bright yellow flowers when mediators from across the globe assembled for the spring conference of the International Academy of Mediators. I had been asked by the conference organizers to lead a discussion, with the goal of inspiring some of the world’s most successful commercial…

I am as much a mediator as I am a member of the global exhibition industry. Knowing both professions intimately, I strongly believe that mediation should be a fundamental tool used to address and solve conflicts within the exhibition industry. In the exhibition industry, healthy co-operation is key to future success and business relationships are…