When I was shopping at the Marina Bay Sands Mall in Singapore some couple months ago, a young Singaporean approached me and politely asked me to participate in a survey. “Where are you from?” the girl stated her first question. “From Prague, Czech Republic…” She smiled and her view gave away her confusion. Obviously, she…

Ireland is grinding to a halt. Or, at least, looking in from the outside one could think it is. 40 days on from the general election, we have no government. None of the parties had a sufficient majority, and no coalition can be formed. The latest attempt at talks ended yesterday almost before it had…

  At the end of March, when I finally arrived back to  Prague after weeks full of traveling (I almost flew the globe around), I sat down and wanted to share with you some experiences I had having attended the Global Pound Conference Series launch in Singapore. Then I realized that the time did not…

Three recent mediations in three jurisdictions raised some interesting issues.  Each mediation was different. One involved a claim for professional negligence against a firm of solicitors for (allegedly) incorrectly including an occupied building in the sale of a large piece of land. The sellers were unhappy that many years had elapsed since the transaction, a number of them passing while…

‘Tis the season to be merry. And indulgent. ‘Tis also the season when favourite songs are compiled by well-meaning souls into apparently themed collections. In the UK, we have a long-running radio show called “Desert Island Discs” in which celebrities and others select their favourite pieces of music as they reminisce about their lives. The…

As 2014 comes to an end, it is good to reflect. How privileged many of us are. I often remark to others that my “job” is better than “real work”. What do I mean when I say that? As mediators, we have an extraordinary window through which we view life, other people and what happens…

Five days from now Scotland may be on its way to becoming the world’s newest country. Or it may not. Just over four million of us will vote on September 18th to determine future political arrangements on the British Isles (affecting some sixty million others). Depending on your point of view, you might say with…

This article was prepared by Christian-Radu Chereji and Constantin-Adi Gavrilă. Recently, talking to a very experienced mediator, we started to describe a particular practice of an attorney-mediator during one of his cases. At the end, we asked: was that mediation? Our friend told us that no, it wasn’t mediation. We asked why and a long…