Offers in mediation are too often approached with all the coyness of gauche teenagers at a school dance (acknowledging that this metaphor may reveal too much about my own youth!). It need not be like this. Here are some thoughts to ease the pain. Going first is not weakness. All mediations require offers to be…

Lawyer making opening statement in mediation

“The world is made, not found.” (W Barnet Pearce) I had been a mediator for about 10 years before I heard parties’ initial words described as their “opening statement.” This may surprise some readers, though probably not if they began, like me, in family mediation, nor community or workplace. Other descriptions are available, as our…

Kleros is a cryptocurrency dispute resolution platform. It uses crypto tokens and game theory to resolve real-world disputes. It follows an automated process with no discussion, no nuance, no probing questions. It seems to be at the opposite end of the dispute resolution spectrum to mediation. Yet I think there is something that mediators can…

I teach an online course for lawyers to help them become more comfortable working with numbers. We spend quite a lot of time on litigation forecasting: assigning probabilities to different outcomes, combining these probabilities correctly and coming up with an overall estimated value for the claim. This is useful to frame the parameters for any…

Reading Alan Limbury’s post last week on the value of the partisan challenged my thinking. Like all good challenges it provoked scrutiny of what I do as a mediator and where I consider I add value. As Alan’s partner in life and work it was particularly valuable to debrief his experience with him in greater…

by Dr. Michael Komuczky, attorney at law at Lansky, Ganzger, Goeth, Frankl + Partner (Vienna, Austria), and Sima Ghaffari, ICC YAF Representative and associate at Ferdowsi Legal (Tehran, Iran) There has been a significant increase in the debate on multi-tiered or hybrid dispute resolution clauses, as can be seen in this Blog or the Kluwer…

The Program on Negotiation at Harvard (PON) sends to subscribers a daily blogpost of interesting negotiation thoughts and analyses. It regularly visits the negotiation styles of world leaders with the idea that ‘by studying the negotiation styles of famous leaders, we can identify what to emulate and what to abandon’. Unsurprisingly it has shone a…

Negotiators in a mediation

It’s been a while since I wrote about practical tips for mediators. Yet when I ask people what they want from training or teaching the commonest answer is… practical tips. I offer some below on working with parties who take cold feet just as resolution is approaching. I was recently asked to speak with lawyers…

In this blogpost, I interview Alesia Ehrhardt on the uses of mediation in business and start-ups, and on her success as a coach at the recent IBA-VIAC International CDRC Mediation and Negotiation Competition. Alesia studied at Technical University of Applied Sciences Wildau, Germany, where she participated in several courses I taught. You are a “venture…

Less than you might think, according to Sir Geoffrey Vos, the newly-appointed Master of the Rolls. The Master of the Rolls is responsible for the administration of civil justice in England & Wales. Sir Geoffrey was sworn in to this post in January 2021. He has spoken several times since then about his vision for…