Lots of talk about ADR competitions on this blog, so I’ll throw my hat in the ring. Last month I took a team of students to the INADR International Law Student Mediation Tournament in Chicago (http://www.inadr.org/tournaments/law-school-tournament). This was the 13th competition and it was truly international, with 52 teams representing 17 US institutions and 22…

Have you ever wondered why the construction industry is still saddled with its culture of adversity, contractual conflict and a “who’s to blame” attitude? Or what causes job disputes to quickly escalate into full-blown claims despite the well intentioned calming efforts of the site managers? The seeds of construction disputes are planted during the formation…

I have written before in this blog about Scotland’s slow pace of change (http://kluwermediationblog.com/2012/05/12/mediation-in-scotland-some-practical-questions-and-a-nudge-in-the-right-direction/). A naturally cautious nation, our ‘old world’ response to new ideas has generally been ‘what’s wrong with the old ones?’ I was comforted by Constantin-Adi Gavrila’s recent post on this blog which underlined that Scotland is not the only European nation…

This article was prepared by Christian-Radu Chereji and Constantin-Adi Gavrilă. Presenting recently the results of the study on ‘Rebooting’ the Mediation Directive, Giuseppe de Palo talked about the “European Union mediation paradox” – the existence of a “highly acclaimed, efficient, effective process that very few people use”, in his own words – and the need…

The annual ICC Commercial Mediation Competition is about to kick off in Paris, France on 7 February 2014 and as I write this 500 students from over 40 countries will be making their way to The City of Light by trains, planes and bus. Teams are drawn from law and business schools across the globe and…

This article was prepared by Christian-Radu Chereji and Constantin-Adi Gavrilă. Recently, talking to a very experienced mediator, we started to describe a particular practice of an attorney-mediator during one of his cases. At the end, we asked: was that mediation? Our friend told us that no, it wasn’t mediation. We asked why and a long…