As mentioned in a previous post, this month I will briefly talk about two high profile cases from the corporate sector which helped to improve mediation awareness in Brazil and, due to its widespread coverage, provided the general public clear examples of how it is possible to fix complex legal problems by not letting our…
“If only as much were known about the human passions as is known about the production of grain or the sales of soap, world maps could be drawn showing the regional distribution of attitudes and temperaments, fears and hopes, and where one finds the people who can laugh at the same joke.” Theodore Zeldin, The…
Its interesting to me that when you Google “lying” and “mediation” you are redirected to “lying” (as in lying down) and “meditation”. Recently my attention was drawn back to the old issue of deception in mediation. It’s an issue that mediators, lawyers and parties engaged in mediation or negotiation do well to reflect on from…
In the past 20 years or so, we witnessed an intensification of the litigation rate as the world became more globalized and people saw lawsuits as the only real alternative to a negotiated agreement. That created high caseloads, extended periods of time until final judgments, discouraging high litigation costs, dissatisfaction with the outcomes and lack…
There is a famous sketch by Monty Python in which the lead character (Michael Palin) is looking to buy a five-minute argument. He walks into an office where the receptionist offers him some options. One of the options involves a person who is too conciliatory. She decides that there is a good argument available and…
On 10 October 2013, Lord Woolf delivered the Singapore Mediation Lecture 2013 to a packed auditorium. The second lecture in this series, the Singapore Mediation Lecture is a result of a partnership between the Singapore Mediation Centre, the Singapore Management University School of Law and Harry Elias Partnership. The inaugural Singapore Mediation Lecture was held…
The “Italian mediation explosion” attracted a lot of attention from the international mediation community. The mediation explosion came to a sudden halt in December 2012, when the Italian Constitutional Court ruled that the provisions had been unconstitutional. Just recently, on September 20, 2013, a new regulation came into effect, again opting for mandatory mediation, but…
Six weeks ago, Ireland lost one of its greatest poets when Seamus Heaney, Nobel Laureate, died at the age of 74. A native of Derry, he was a member of the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland and thus no stranger to tension and conflict. The passages which I want to share with you this month…
This week I spoke to a group of young legal practitioners here in New Zealand. I aimed low and went back to source. I suspect I got more of a kick out of it than anyone at the session. So, mediators, look away. There is nothing new here. But users, occasional or repeat, I hope these three…
Each September for the past 11 years, Cologne University, under the auspices of CENTRAL (the Center for Transnational Law: http://www.central.uni-koeln.de), and in Association with the German Institution of Arbitration (DIS: www.dis-arb.de) has hosted a Summer Academy in International Commercial Arbitration. More recently – 8 years ago – an academy on mediation was added, to run…
