Story telling and humor are among the essential tools in any mediator’s kit. Of course, when it comes to humor, mediators learn early in their career that the self-deprecating variety is usually the safest choice. This turns out to be quite good for me since in my life there is no shortage of material to…

An article by Donalee Moulton in the January 24th issue of The Lawyers Weekly entitled, “Opening offers can make or break a deal” caught my attention and caused me to reflect on my own experience from approximately 3,000 mediations conducted over the past 22 years. I urge readers to look a the Lawyers Weekly article…

Should the conduct of a party in mediation be taken into account in setting cost consequences once the dispute has been adjudicated? An insurer has been “spanked” to the tune of $60,000 by an Ontario Court for failure to participate in a mediation in “any meaningful sense”. The cost decision of Mr. Justice Ramsay in…

This note is a response to, and affirmation of the idea behind Bill Marsh’s provocative notion that the best mediators and negotiators smoke. Of course, in these non-smoking times, we couldn’t possibly agree with the apparent endorsement of smoking and yet the underlying idea Bill conveys is an important one – about the structure of…

Sometimes, I look around at mediation events at a sea of grey hair (mine included!). Where, I wonder, are those to whom we are handing this torch? And more importantly, what do they think? So as the dust settled on last month’s ICC mediation competition in Paris, I took the chance to capture some of…

The Problem You have become accustomed to communicating settlement offers through email; Your email efforts have been misunderstood by the other side;   In the fast-paced world in which we live, it is easy to get caught up in communicating through electronic channels such as the BlackBerry or the iPhone so that your message is…

One of the advantages of using mediation to achieve negotiated solutions is Parties’ possibility to separately communicate with the mediator within what it is called separate sessions or caucus. The differences of perception, the emotions and feelings determined by the ego, the stubbornness or the personality of Parties involved in a conflict are examples of…