Scotland is a practical nation. The list of its inventions includes penicillin, anaesthetics, steam engines, tarmac roads and even the decimal point (see http://www.magicdragon.com/Wallace/thingscot.html#Ta). Like the rest of the UK its culture was in part forged by the ‘practical man’ of the Industrial Revolution, rejecting grand theory in favour of trial and error. Its lawyers,…

As I sat down at my desk the other day to think about what to blog about this month, e- mails and text messages suddenly started pinging into my inbox giving me the rather exciting news that the Minister for Justice had just published the draft Mediation Bill, promised in the Programme for Government set…

Picking up where I left off last post, I want to discuss what I consider to be a major problem with the Ontario Commercial Mediation Act, 2010 (OCMA) relating to the admissibility of evidence of what occurred during a mediation. Generally (with some exceptions) at Common Law anything said or done in mediation is inadmissible…

The modern mediation movement was established in Singapore in the mid-1990s. I say modern because historically, the population of Singapore (both indigenous and migrant) practiced their own forms of mediation. With colonization came the English common law and court system that unfortunately saw the reduction, if not demise, of these local forms of mediation. When…

One of the privileges and perils of working as a mediator in Scotland is that we get a close-up view of developments in England and Wales. In an ideal world this should allow us (pop. 5 million) to learn from them (pop. 55 million): to pick the best innovations and avoid the failures. As I…

According to reports, we should now get used to living in an era of austerity. Tax increases, welfare cuts, and salary freezes are on their way in many countries. Does this mean that public spending on mediation must be cut as well? Quite the contrary. Mediation may bring significant savings in difficult times soon to…

1. Unlike the arbitral process where courts strive to distinguish between the concepts of a private process and a confidential process, the mediation process is indisputably and inherently confidential. But what happens if one party breaches this confidentiality during the mediation? In formal terms, can the act by one party in breach be treated as…

One of the things I value most highly about my mediation practice is the trust that is put in me by the people with whom I work. The parties to a mediation will tell me about their hopes, wishes and fears within a conflict, and will trust me to keep these to myself. It is…