Decision making

Argument, Below the line, Clients, Commercial Mediation, Decision making, Dialogue, Experience, Framing, General, Joint Sessions, lawyers in mediation, mediation process, Mediators’ Conduct, Mistakes, Perception, Practical Challenges for Mediators, Tips, Uncategorized

(Bill Marsh Mediator)/ /8 Comments

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…

Appointment of Mediators, Cooperation, cross-border mediation, Decision making, Developing the Field, Dispute Resolution, Future of mediation, Governments/Public Sector, International Conciliation, International Mediation, Negotiation, peace negotiations, Promoting Mediation, Public Policy, Scotland, Uncategorized

(Core Solutions Group)/ /Leave a comment

Effective inter-governmental relations among the constituent parts of the United Kingdom are essential in an era of increased devolution of powers, post-Brexit allocation of responsibility and contested narratives about the future of the (uncodified) UK constitution. Background One of the rather depressing aspects of the constitutional impasse in the UK is that inter-governmental relations (IGR)…

ADR, Commercial Mediation, Deal Mediation, Decision making, Dispute Resolution, Intuition, Mediation wisdom, Uncategorized

(Bruce Greig, Civil and Commercial Mediator)/ /1 Comment

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…

Clients, Commercial Mediation, Creativity, Decision making, Developing the Field, Evaluative Mediation, Future of mediation

(University of New South Wales)/ /2 Comments

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…

Decision making, Interests, Mediation and Society, mediation process, Neuroscience, Philosophy, Policy

(Core Solutions Group)/ /Leave a comment

To what extent do we have control over our future? There is a lively debate among philosophers, neuroscientists and others (summarised in an article by Oliver Burkman) about the degree to which free will exists, or whether what happens to us is predetermined by what has gone before. Burkman concludes his article with the reminder that:…

Clients, Commercial Mediation, Decision making, Experience, Framing, Impasse, Mediation Practice, Practical Challenges for Mediators, Skills, Tactics, Tips, Uncategorized, Values and attributes of a mediator

(University of Strathclyde)/ /Leave a comment
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…

Costs in Mediation, Decision making, Interests, Lawyers, lawyers in mediation, Legal Issues, Legal Practice, Mediation Lawyering, Negotiation, Tactics, Trial Value

(University of Missouri Center for the Study of Dispute Resolution)/ /Leave a comment

While it is obvious that law is significant in legal disputes, how the law is used is not so obvious. This piece uses Oliver Wendell Holmes’s famous definition of the law as “prophecies of what the courts will do in fact,” rather than rules expressed in statutes, case law etc. It discusses two aspects of…

Conventional wisdom, Decision making, Evaluative Mediation, Improvisation, Intuition, mediation models, Mediation Practice, mediation process, Mindset, Practical Challenges for Mediators, Reflective Practice, Tactics, The role of the mediator

(University of Missouri Center for the Study of Dispute Resolution)/ /Leave a comment

I was puzzled to get an email from a mediator thanking me for my recent post, which advocated using a unified conceptual framework of unbundled mediation interventions. The puzzling part was that she wrote that it helped to “validate my theory that ‘bundling’ of mediation models can be appropriate and effective in the right case…

Commercial Mediation, Community Mediation, Decision making, Evaluative Mediation, Family Mediation, International commercial mediation, lawyers in mediation, mediation models, Mediation Practice, mediation process, Reflective Practice

(University of Missouri Center for the Study of Dispute Resolution)/ /1 Comment

A quarter century ago, Professor Leonard Riskin published an article describing a grid of mediator orientiations including a facilitative-evaluative dimension.  Despite critiques of this framework, including by Riskin himself, many mediators, trainers, and teachers still use these concepts as mediation models, expressing strong feelings that one model is good and the other is bad. These…

Communication, Decision making, Dialogue, Dispute Resolution, Language, Negotiation, Skills

(University of Missouri Center for the Study of Dispute Resolution)/ /Leave a comment

“Managing a Client’s expectations and advising them on a course of action turned out to be far more difficult than negotiating with the other Party.” So wrote newly-minted Indian lawyer Varsha Manoj about her experiences negotiating with her clients. Many lawyers in the US and other countries undoubtedly have similar experiences. Legal clients often experience…