At long last, on 20 August 2015, the French Government transposed a 2013 EU directive regulating mediation for consumer disputes. This new piece of legislation, which aims at increasing the use of mediation in sales and service consumer contracts, could create new business opportunities for mediators. The big picture : the idea behind the Directive…

The Proposal in New York In July 2014, during a session of UNCITRAL that took place in New York, a Proposal to undertake work on the preparation of a convention on the enforceability of international commercial settlement agreements reached through mediation/conciliation was put forward to UNCITRAL by the government of the United States of America. …

My wife and I recently spent a very convivial evening at the beautiful home in Sydney of leading Australian mediator Alan Limbury and his wife, Dr. Rosemary Howell, who coaches a team from the University of New South Wales in the annual ICC mediation competition. One topic which stimulated some forthright conversation was the use…

The recent blog entry by Matthew Rushton (23 August) is a reminder of what changes can and do happen across the diverse landscape of mediation, and of the ways in which the “classical” model of mediation is probably as much a fond memory as it is a consistent practice. In both practice and training, we’ve…

“Mediation” in some Criminal Cases Recently (24th June 2015) a Judge of the Madras High Court (India) while hearing a bail appeal of a man convicted of raping a young girl, agreed to the bail request on condition that the man try “mediation” with the victim.[1]http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/madras-hc-gives-bail-to-rape-convict-to-mediate-with-victim/article1-1362173.aspx Mediation is aimed at marriage. “The case before us is…

Market resistance to the use of joint sessions is best illustrated by data from a survey of JAMS neutrals conducted in April 2015. 76% of JAMS’s 300-plus neutrals responded, and the data show both a decline in the use of joint sessions, and a clear discrepancy between East and West Coasts. 80% of neutrals surveyed…

Not that the ADR is a boring milieu, but given the time of the year and the number of official and unofficial holidays the dispute resolution practitioners are taking right now, I have decided to step out from the line when writing this blog post. With the end of the summer approaching, enjoy a bit…

Regular readers of this blog will know that I am exercised by the question of justice in mediation. I test the concept on people I meet; responses range from “that’s an interesting idea” to “it has nothing whatever to do with it”. At a conference earlier this year a senior lawyer claimed he could count…

It is the beginning of the school term at the Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore, where in this semester, I teach a Negotiation Workshop. In our first class yesterday, we played a pricing game based on the Prisoner’s Dilemma. There are many versions of this pricing game and it essentially introduces participants to…