This post should be about trust and credibility, moreover when it comes for reasons to choose mediation. We recently received a request for mediation from a family that encountered difficulties in engaging with their new neighbours that bought the house next door. That city centre area is packed with houses close together that are left…

I practice, teach and preach mediation for the past fifteen years and whenever I would introduce myself as a mediator the vast majority of people would still have confusions, if not difficulties, in having a clear representation of WHO a mediator is, WHAT is it that a mediator aims to achieve, for WHOM, WHAT he…

This post was prepared in cooperation with Bogdan Matei. Neutrality is one of the keystone concepts in the mediation process. When the mediator or the parties consider that the mediator’s neutrality is affected, a conflict of interest appears. It is well known that when a conflict of interests appears, in respect to the ethical rules…

This article was prepared by Christian-Radu Chereji and Constantin-Adi Gavrilă. There is a lot of talk nowadays about the apparent failure of mediation to live up to its potential. Reports published on paper and online, presented before institutions or at various conferences, point to the relatively low number of mediation cases compared to the number…

This article may be helpful particularly if you consider settling a case as a party or as an advisor. There are many perspectives that one can consider when looking at mediation. One example is that our current mediation culture is still in development. Therefore, sometimes, parties ask me, the mediator, to invite the other party…

This article was prepared by Christian-Radu Chereji and Constantin-Adi Gavrilă. Presenting recently the results of the study on ‘Rebooting’ the Mediation Directive, Giuseppe de Palo talked about the “European Union mediation paradox” – the existence of a “highly acclaimed, efficient, effective process that very few people use”, in his own words – and the need…

This article was prepared by Christian-Radu Chereji and Constantin-Adi Gavrilă. Recently, talking to a very experienced mediator, we started to describe a particular practice of an attorney-mediator during one of his cases. At the end, we asked: was that mediation? Our friend told us that no, it wasn’t mediation. We asked why and a long…

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…

If I look back 10 years ago I can notice that mediation has had an evolution which at that time, we could but hope for. From the random pilot projects and the search “laboratories” of this activity, in the year 2013, mediation has become a freestanding profession and even a social and professional phenomenon. Mediation…