The International Commercial Mediation Competition made a brave online appearance this year – the 16th year in which the ICC has delivered the most important competition of its kind in the world. For 15 of these 16 years it has been my privilege to be part of this experience as the coach for my…

ICC’s biggest educational event of the year, its International Mediation Competition, took place from 5 to 11 February 2021 and, for the first time of its history, it was conducted online. It was its 16th edition and 48 universities from 39 countries competed online, via a dedicated platform. It has been an opportunity for us,…

In this interview, Dr. Frank Gerhards shares his experience in using mediation proceedings to successfully resolve an active ingredient patent dispute between two major crop protection companies. Dr. Frank Gerhards is a qualified German patent attorney and representative before the European Patent Office, employed with Bayer Intellectual Property (BIP) since 2006 and group leader since…

Writing this first 2021 post is a task that leads me to make an inevitable retrospective of the past year – 2020. A year to be remembered and whose events have been unrivalled by any others in recent humankind history. The past year was indeed a challenging one, a time when negotiation and mediation skills…

I write this in the aftermath of yet another mediation in which the protagonists exhibited symptoms of having been seriously traumatised by the litigation process to which they had been exposed. Depression, suicidal thoughts, anger, loathing, destroyed relationships, large amounts of money spent with no discernible value. And this was a commercial situation, not a…

Covid is the gift that keeps on giving. It has provided a wonderful focus for blame that has let us off the hook for a lot of things. It has coincided with significant changes in our mediation experiences and again has been seized on as the culprit when mediation sessions go ‘off piste’. The new…

Just recently (November 4th), hackers attacked Brazil’s Superior Court of Justice (Superior Tribunal de Justiça – STJ). Not only they had access to the Court’s system and encrypted its entire database but also demanded ransom money to restore it. In other words, they succeeded in hacking one of the most centralized courts in the Brazilian…

I say regularly that students make the best teachers. My students continue to prove me right. In my recent ADR program I confessed to my undergraduate students that having a conversation about culture was something that made me very anxious. I feel poorly prepared and I fear, with the best intentions, causing offence and appearing…

The Brazilian Mediation Act (Law 13140/2015) establishes that “the object of mediation may be a dispute over “disposable” (transferable or waivable) rights or non-disposable, non-waivable rights which are able to be negotiated” (art. 3). In this sense, we wonder if mediation will be available to all the new conflicts that will emerge from the new…

In recent years, mediation has been actively discussed for the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) regime, particularly as a means of reducing costs and delays. This interest is one reaction to growing discontent about the option of investor-state arbitration (ISA) typically offered by host states in international investment treaties, to make substantive commitments (like non-discrimination) more…