“If you had not held us back that evening, the deal would not have been done.” “Thank you and I wish you well.” In this post, I return to a familiar theme for mediators and for lawyers acting for clients in mediation: perseverance. The first of the two quotations above comes from a participant in…
I was again privileged to be at the ICC International Commercial Mediation Competition in early February, which this time included a new event – an intergenerational round table, workshops for student and professional participants together. It began with an hour of dialogue around one table, where participants were asked to generate and discuss questions for…
I wish to add to Michael Leathes’ recent post on his suggestion that more field-based research be done into the mediation product and Rick Weiler’s follow-up. There are really two distinct questions here. One relates to whether, with enough real-world research, we can put mediation in a nice box with a ribbon around it and…
This post is part of a series on the UN Convention on Mediated Settlement Agreements Resulting from Mediation (the Singapore Convention on Mediation). In previous posts we have outlined the conventional view that Article 5 of the Singapore Convention establishes exhaustively all the possible exceptions to the enforcement of iMSAs that have otherwise have complied…
Michael Leathes in his recent thought provoking post argues for the need for more “field-based” mediation research by which he means actual observations of the live action by skilled researchers. He poses the questions: “Has the mediation world spent too long developing lab-based facts to suit its theories? Might it start to hone new theories…
Early in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1891 short story A Scandal in Bohemia, Sherlock Holmes gives Watson a lecture on the difference between seeing and observing. To test how well Watson understood, Holmes hands him an unaddressed, undated, anonymous letter that had just arrived on the doormat. It announced that an unnamed visitor would shortly…
For dispute resolution practitioners familiar with the concept of the seat of arbitration, it may come as a surprise that the new UN Convention on International Settlement Agreement Resulting from Mediation does not include provisions in relation to the ‘seat’ of mediation. Why, you may ask? The Convention includes no provisions on ‘seat’ simply because…
January is the time of the year when we all reflect on the past experiences and set goals for the unfolding new year. From a mediation perspective, 2018 marked major positive developments in Turkey. Turkish mediation practice is developing quickly through the implementation of mandatory mediation. Rafal Morek mentions in his blog post how mandatory…
While the Brexit saga continues to make headlines around the world, the international mediation community should not forget to keep an eye on recent major developments in the field of ADR. The Civil Justice Council’s ADR working group has released its much anticipated final report on the use of ADR within the civil justice system…
This article has been inspired by Greg Bond’s recent article “Mediation Moves – A Conference, a Workshop, a Movement” and by the thought it has triggered: where have we moved in terms of mediation in Georgia? This thought coincided in timing with Tbilisi Mediation Days – a two-day international conference which took place on November…
