The Kluwer Mediation Blog provides an excellent opportunity for all of us to learn more about the practice of mediation around the world. I’ve had the privilege of training mediators in a number of places outside Canada including Russia, Albania, Uganda and  Lesotho and know that practice experiences vary widely from place to place. In…

The mediators are complex personalities. The mediators are part of the world-wide intellectual elite by promoting the purpose, the importance and the usefulness of the collaborative thinking in the pursuit of a vision founded on the quality of life. The mediators are helping people with cleaning the “dust of ignorance” off the human diamante, rediscovering…

It´s about the students and they did themselves proud with South Texas College of Law taking out the magnificent glass trophy – goodness knows how they got it past security at Charles de Gaulle.  Bar Ilan University (Israel) was runner up and there was not much in it. The beautiful people of the mediation world were…

Picture a group of 30 trial lawyers in an almost empty room, loudly chanting, ‘Big Booty, Big Booty, Big Booty!’ Now imagine a pair of them trying to have a conversation without using the letter ‘S’. How about two of them vying for the attention of a third by, at turns, singing, crying, jumping up…

I was pleased to read that this year’s ICC Competition went so well. Having hosted the UK Law Student Mediation Competition in Glasgow in November I was first-hand witness to the wholehearted, thoughtful way young mediators throw themselves into this work. They appear unaffected by the scepticism of older lawyers. All of this is very…

I mediated an insurance matter this week and as far as insurance disputes are concerned, never has a truer word been spoken; >Litigants are eager to discuss their cases Reality; the parties tend to withhold information >Mediation will be conducted in joint sessions Reality; the parties prefer private sessions >Mediation will focus on needs and…

I have been interested in, and have been training in various methods of Online Dispute Resolution for some time, so when a case of mine recently converted into a type of online mediation I thought I would take some time to reflect on what I learned from the experience. First, a few words about how…

Quality standards for the mediator? What conditions are needed for the successful outcome of a mediation? Without parties’ commitment to really resolve the conflict and settle the case, no success is possible. So commitment of the parties is a sine qua non. Still, we must also look at the mediator, who may be essential for…

I will never forget my first day in a mediation class where one word that reverberated over a hundred times was “interest, interest and interest”! “Focus on underlying interests’ was the phrase that dominated the experience that I truly got bored. That was a mistake as I bungled the very first mediation I was called…

Cartesian philosophy encouraged the fragmentation of knowledge and made it possible for different subjects and their branches to appear. Such fact brought about the expansion of knowledge in a microscopic way. Having become highly specialized man believed he had mastered all knowledge without realizing at first he had lost the perspective of the whole. Such…