Looking beyond the short term, the fun, and the parties, large international sports events are an opportunity for the host country to improve the life of its citizens on a permanent basis. Large sport events may serve as a catalyst for political support around the solution of issues that otherwise might be unaddressed and, therefore,…
Two stories in the Canadian media caught my eye this past month. New Rules for Bank Mediators – The Federal Minister of Finance has indicated that the Canadian federal government will not require banks to mediate their disputes with customers through mediation services offered by the Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investments (OBSI). OSBI is…
Since April 2005 there have been two structural provisions for referral to mediation: via the Legal Desk and via the Judiciary. Besides, conflicting parties can start mediation on their own initiative or after referral by other bodies. Other referring bodies comprise, for instance, occupational health and safety services, social services, youth services, the police, social…
The quiet child of the legal brood is the transactional lawyer. They are a group that offer hidden wells of future development for mediation. This group of lawyers has extensive and close ongoing relationships with the individuals clients–the people who work in corporate, government and commercial clients. Transactional lawyers are the ones who document their…
Yes I do – and as I stood 4th in line outside Dick Smith’s (read PC World or Radio Shack) at 5am Friday week ago waiting to get my hands on my first iPad I resolved to make the iPad 3 central to my practice. The guy next to me had been on the TV…
It is not uncommon to hear lawyers speak warmly of mediation in general, but when asked if they would recommend it for a particular case respond that they could not see it working. Related to this, lawyers who have developed well-honed negotiation skills may struggle to see how a mediator could improve on their outcomes….
One of the things that has been exercising me for some time is the question of what constitutes success in commercial mediation. I ask the question because the experience of the London office of my international law firm – which has attempted to gather data on mediations in which we have participated for nearly 15…
The Situation: Your adversary is attacking your case in the mediation in such a manner that good faith negotiations seem like a distant cousin to all out war. You are looking for a way to recover. You don’t want to walk out of the room, but you are running out of options and the negotiation…
While the world becomes ever faster-paced, litigating business disputes are unchangeably slow. The recently published World Bank’s “Doing Business 2012: Doing Business in a More Transparent World” report shows that state court procedures in most countries remain lengthy, costly and complicated. Although this is not good news for anyone, as a side effect, the flaws…
Anyone who saw the 2010 Wimbledon match between Nicholas Mahut and John Isner would appreciate my feelings as I watched an almost endless play of wits during a recent energy deal in which I had been appointed as Transaction Counsel. Clearly, parties to the deals had their cards and kept playing it in a bid…
