A lot has been said about how to spread the mediation culture in Brazil. Undoubtedly, it is critical to improve the awareness of mediation as a useful tool in dispute resolution, targeting potential users and clients especially. These are the people who will select and recommend mediation to solve disputes and lawyers are probably the…
As Ella Fitzgerald used to sing, Summertime and the livin’ is easy. Your faithful Canadian correspondent knows you are craving mediation-related reading to help you while away those lazy, crazy-hazy days of summer. Four recent Canadian judicial decisions should fill the bill. Supreme Court of Canada encourages Pierringer Agreements. In June the Supreme Court of…
Last winter, Rick Weiler and I posted comments on this blog on a mediation success story when the NHL Lockout dispute was successfully resolved. Reporting on the commencement of that mediation, Rick wrote: “one thing for sure, given hockey’s near sacred status in Canada, all eyes will be on this mediation. It may provide a…
This story is for you if: You handle wage and hour class action cases; You run into the situation where there are multiple similar actions filed against the same defendant by different plaintiffs. Settling class action cases is typically a distributive negotiation where there is a fixed pie that gets divided up. While there…
This note is a response to, and affirmation of the idea behind Bill Marsh’s provocative notion that the best mediators and negotiators smoke. Of course, in these non-smoking times, we couldn’t possibly agree with the apparent endorsement of smoking and yet the underlying idea Bill conveys is an important one – about the structure of…
Last year, I wrote about the Peacemakers’ Initiative and talked a little about its intent, objectives and effect. This year, I want to provide readers, by way of update, a development that is both touching and an indication that things are on the right track. To set the context, the Peacemakers’ Conference is an initiative…
Here is a confession. I have a theory (in the best traditions of Monty Python). It is totally untested. I am pretty certain that it would not survive rigorous, double-blind trials. It may, however, contain some seeds of insight. My theory – wait for it – is that mediations where one or more of the…
Co-Author Lughaidh Kerin, NUI Galway The School of Law, National University of Ireland, Galway hosted in association the UNESCO Child and Family Research Centre, NUIG and the Irish Centre for International Family Mediation a Conference on Mediation in Cases of International Family Conflict and Child Abduction on a typically damp Saturday in May in the…
Not so long ago I was a claiming party as part of a group of plaintiffs in the stead of my elderly parents in a multiparty, multimillion dollar mediation. Now, I mediate around 120 mediations every year as a commercial mediator here in New Zealand so it was with a mix of personal apprehension and professional curiosity…
This is the final posting of a 3-part series. Previous posts in the series noted the gathering tempest being whipped up by opacity in ADR practice. How can structural change help the ship steer towards modernity? User demand for more information and higher professional standards in ADR is unequivocal. An international institution is needed to…
