In November 2009, John Kenyon published a blog entry titled “Mediation Jokes” with the first sentence saying, “There is much discussion on whether or not mediation is a profession yet one of the defining marks of a profession is when you can tell jokes about its practitioners.” With the passage of time, the practice of…

“It’s hard to beat Dark Side of the Moon” he said. “What a piece of music.” I agreed: “Did you ever see Pink Floyd play Dark Side live? I recall being at Earls Court in 1994.” “I was there too!” he exclaimed. For a moment or two, we reflected on the album’s seemingly relevant song…

Corona is managed under different circumstances around the world. These depend on resources and infrastructure, and also on political interpretations of the science and of the effects of spreading infection in society. There are also cultural factors that play a role here – concerning the political culture of a country and also the values that…

  The International Commercial Mediation Competition made a brave online appearance this year – the 16th year in which the ICC has delivered the most important competition of its kind in the world. For 15 of these 16 years it has been my privilege to be part of this experience as the coach for my…

The Singapore International Dispute Resolution Academy (“SIDRA”) issued the global International Dispute Resolution Survey: 2020 Final Report (the “SIDRA Survey”) on 3 July 2020, which studied the preferences, experiences, and perspectives of legal users (lawyers and legal advisers) and client users (corporate executives and in-house counsel) with regard to, among other mechanisms, international commercial mediation….

For readers who are new, the “Neuro-Linguist’s Toolbox” series is an ongoing series focused on using Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) in our practice of amicable dispute resolution. The first section focused on rapport (the first of which can be found here). The second section focuses on matters of self-care and personal improvement for mediators (the first…

University of Strathclyde, host to Learning by Doing, mediation clinic conference

By the everyday miracle of Zoom, Carrie Menkel-Meadow spoke from her LA office to a Glasgow conference with a worldwide audience. Wrapping up ‘Learning by Doing,’ the UK’s first conference devoted to mediation clinics, her keynote described the inspiration for a whole career: a colleague in her legal aid office in the 1970s. While Carrie…

ICC’s biggest educational event of the year, its International Mediation Competition, took place from 5 to 11 February 2021 and, for the first time of its history, it was conducted online. It was its 16th edition and 48 universities from 39 countries competed online, via a dedicated platform. It has been an opportunity for us,…

” . . . how are we to deal with this grief? People might react with despair, sadness, frustration, lack of control, hopelessness, and even apathy. It’s understandable, given the enormity of the destruction taking place. It’s understandable to feel powerless when faced with the news of another whale dying, another forest being decimated, or…

Since so much communication at work and home has gone online through the Covid lockdowns we have been witnessing a whole new vocabulary of everyday life. As much of this communication is likely to stay online, it pays to take a critical look at the vocabulary we are using. It is fairly straightforward to find…