There is a short period of time in any difficult mediation where the tension escalates and tough negotiation decisions have to be made. Some people call this a ‘do or die’ moment. Its like the last vote in the Supreme Court in Gore v. Bush. Or its Tiger Woods chipping in from the fringe of…
Mediation doesn’t require special premises. It can be conducted in any type of place. There are Native Title mediations for Indigenous Australians that can happen at least in part on the land in question, under a tree or on a hill side. Mediations in the workplace often happen in the place where the dispute originally…
The Kluwer Mediation Blog provides an excellent opportunity for all of us to learn more about the practice of mediation around the world. I’ve had the privilege of training mediators in a number of places outside Canada including Russia, Albania, Uganda and Lesotho and know that practice experiences vary widely from place to place. In…
Picture a group of 30 trial lawyers in an almost empty room, loudly chanting, ‘Big Booty, Big Booty, Big Booty!’ Now imagine a pair of them trying to have a conversation without using the letter ‘S’. How about two of them vying for the attention of a third by, at turns, singing, crying, jumping up…
[Author’s Note: Some of the ideas in this post are taken from Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s book “The Black Swan”. I highly recommend it. I have probably misunderstood and misrepresented some of what he has said. All mistakes are mine] I was recently in Seoul presenting at the “Mediation In Asia” conference organized by the Korea…
I mediated an insurance matter this week and as far as insurance disputes are concerned, never has a truer word been spoken; >Litigants are eager to discuss their cases Reality; the parties tend to withhold information >Mediation will be conducted in joint sessions Reality; the parties prefer private sessions >Mediation will focus on needs and…
I will never forget my first day in a mediation class where one word that reverberated over a hundred times was “interest, interest and interest”! “Focus on underlying interests’ was the phrase that dominated the experience that I truly got bored. That was a mistake as I bungled the very first mediation I was called…
Picking up where I left off last post, I want to discuss what I consider to be a major problem with the Ontario Commercial Mediation Act, 2010 (OCMA) relating to the admissibility of evidence of what occurred during a mediation. Generally (with some exceptions) at Common Law anything said or done in mediation is inadmissible…
The ICC International Commercial Mediation Competition is the only moot I know of devoted to international commercial mediation and it will take place in Paris in early February. It’s an annual event organized by the International Chamber of Commerce and has become the best excuse to travel to Paris, drink coffee and eat pastries on the…
As I write these lines, I am working on a commercial mediation project in the Pacific nation of Samoa – yes the one that has just jumped across the international dateline. My blog post today is a reflection on an aspect of this work that is relevant, not just to me, but to any of…
