1. Failing to get the right people at the table. 2. Failing to explain the mediator’s role as agent of reality. 3. Permitting settlement negotiations to begin prematurely – prior to permitting the parties to vent or prior to risk analysis and reality testing. 4. Failing to orchestrate the negotiations by discouraging out of the…
Desire. I have some transcripts from real-life family mediations to analyse and reading the transcripts, it struck me that I was reading about desire. This sent me back to my 1985 language, literature and culture textbook, Modern Literary Theory, and to psychoanalytic and linguistic theories. Thinking also about Nadja Alexander’s post about the Carlo Scarpa…
This morning I was greeted with the news that Julian Barnes’ The Sense of An Ending had been named this year’s winner of the Man Booker Prize. A wonderful read, in part about how our memory deceives us, it struck me as an appropriate point of departure for this blog post. Like Barnses’ narrator, “I…
Last weekend I was entertained by the “progressive rock” group Caravan, a lesser known group of musicians, the peak of whose glory was 40 years ago, in 1971. These grey-haired men in their mid-60’s displayed enthusiasm, energy and engagement as they took us down memory lane, with deft playing and masterly reconstruction of some of…
At their third mediation meeting, the parties reached an agreement in a dispute between family members over family property. The parties also seemed to settle older personal issues that apparently had nothing to do with the case. With the feeling that both the relationship and the outcome issues were resolved, six parties and their lawyers…
The Situation: Your client has brought a spouse or a significant other to the mediation who is having a problematic influence on your client’s decision-making abilities. This is preventing you from getting your client prepared for a fair settlement. The Solution: Enroll the spouse in the settlement process early, as opposed to ignoring them. This…
This post is dedicated to the memory of Steve Jobs (1955-2011) [Author’s note: I had in mind another subject for this blog post. I was however moved to write this one. It seems fitting that I am writing it on my Mac Book Air.] 5 October 2011 was a sad day. It saw the passing…
They say that you can take the girl out of Australia but that you can’t take Australia out of the girl. So as an Australian living in Hong Kong, let me leave the east-meets-west stories for another time and begin with the very Australian concept of BYO. It’s a long established tradition in Australia to…
I recently met an acquaintance of mine whom I have not seen for some time. He asked what I am doing, job wise. I replied that I am now doing mediation full time. “Oh,” he replied “do you do legal mediation or family mediation?” I smiled wearily and launched into my usual explanation of what…
Last week, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair said in a television interview that he had just made his 71st trip to the Middle East in the three or four years that he has been envoy for the group of four – EU, UN, Russia and the US. He is of course acting as a…
