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…

At this time of year, it is good to reflect, to look back, and also to look forward. This is not always easy as we sense the clutter and complexity of life crowding in on us. I have had the uneasy experience in the past few weeks of clearing out the Core office, our administrative…

This series of blogs posts explores investment mediation from a variety of angles. In this third installment, we explain the primary differences between mediation and conciliation at ICSID. In part one, we explore how to determine whether mediation is an appropriate option for resolving an investment dispute, while part two looked at what mediation is—and…

On the 16th of November 2021, Ukraine has finally enacted the Law on Mediation as Rafal Morek has already written. Ukraine was perhaps the last country of the post-Soviet block to do so. It took more than 10 years and 14 official drafts registered at the Parliament, and enormous work of the mediation community to…

by Dr. Michael Komuczky, attorney at law at Lansky, Ganzger, Goeth, Frankl + Partner (Vienna, Austria), and Sima Ghaffari, ICC YAF Representative and associate at Ferdowsi Legal (Tehran, Iran) There has been a significant increase in the debate on multi-tiered or hybrid dispute resolution clauses, as can be seen in this Blog or the Kluwer…

The Program on Negotiation at Harvard (PON) sends to subscribers a daily blogpost of interesting negotiation thoughts and analyses. It regularly visits the negotiation styles of world leaders with the idea that ‘by studying the negotiation styles of famous leaders, we can identify what to emulate and what to abandon’. Unsurprisingly it has shone a…

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…

John Sturrock and I recently had the pleasure of contributing a session on game theory and mediation to a workshop on global conflict and dispute resolution hosted by the Delhi Metropolitan Education College. Preparing for the event led me to reflect further on game theory and its relationship to mediation. In summary, game theory analyses…

This series of blog posts explores investment mediation from a variety of angles. In part one, we explore how to determine whether—and when—mediation is an appropriate option for resolving an investment dispute. Part two elaborates on what mediation is—and how it works—in the context of investment disputes. Part three outlines the primary differences between mediation…