It gives me great pleasure to announce that the publishers of this blog and Kluwer Arbitration are hosting their first Webinar designed for corporate counsel on Wednesday 9th November (4pm Central European time/3pm UK time/10am Eastern Standard Time). The webinar is entitled Shell vs GE: The Employer-Contractor Debate. The Best Way to Resolve Conflicts and…

At their third mediation meeting, the parties reached an agreement in a dispute between family members over family property. The parties also seemed to settle older personal issues that apparently had nothing to do with the case. With the feeling that both the relationship and the outcome issues were resolved, six parties and their lawyers…

They say that you can take the girl out of Australia but that you can’t take Australia out of the girl. So as an Australian living in Hong Kong, let me leave the east-meets-west stories for another time and begin with the very Australian concept of BYO. It’s a long established tradition in Australia to…

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…