As the world of business develops at an unprecedented pace, we all are constantly facing new challenging situations which we must rapidly understand, find new solutions to and, in some cases, adapt ourselves to. A global net of co-operations, business opportunities, market resources and novel technologies has inevitable spanned across our world of business. Along…

“Crikey it’s like herding cats!” a student said to me recently during a multi-party mediation role-play. It struck me as a fairly accurate description of mediation alright; the parties, the other stakeholders, the multitude of issues, apparent and covert, the emotions and the changes in pace and direction. And that is only in the mediation…

This is a blog I have shied away from writing. Several times. Even now, as I do so, I am wary of it. But here goes. I’ll come right out with it. Very few women feature on the lists of “top” commercial mediators. This year’s Who Who Legal World’s Top Ten features precisely….none. Seriously? Come…

Once again, we find ourselves on the eve of the annual ICC Commercial Mediation Competition which is about to kick off in Paris, France next week. Last year I posted 10 tips for participants, one of the most important being that mediation remains an oral sport, and the most effective counsel and parties in real…

“Instructions for living a life.  Pay attention.  Be astonished.  Tell about it.”  Mary Oliver, American poet “Everyone knows what attention is. It is the taking possession by the mind in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought…It implies withdrawal from some things in order…

(This is the second of three parts of a keynote address to the YMCA Conference “From Reactions to Relations” in Burton on Trent on 20 November 2014) Last month I wrote in this blog about the fact that mediators “can’t help noticing” certain things as a result of the work that we do. We are…

A couple of years ago in January I wrote a post on likely developments in Ireland in the New Year which, if I recall correctly, had the expression “High Hopes” in the title. Those hopes related primarily to the publication of a new, comprehensive piece of legislation on mediation and the impact it might have…