Commercial Mediation

Previous blog entries on this theme of water have focussed primarily on the process and stalled progress of the Land and Water Forum [LWF] in New Zealand. This was a process intended to bring…

I am travelling back from a couple of days in and around Dublin, discussing an initiative on respectful political dialogue with politicians, academics and conflict resolution professionals. It was a…

On 6 July I attended the finale of the Global Pound Series held in London, the last in the series of events held worldwide to an audience of over 2000 over 30+ events. I will say now I am not a…

Imagine you are a university lecturer, teaching courses in negotiation and mediation. Imagine you are also teaching a course in legal English for non-native speakers, which closely shadows a course…

I recently carried out New Zealand’s first empirical research on the users of commercial mediation. This is Part Three of a three-part study (Part One = the mediators, Part Two = the gatekeepers…

What is it about disputes in regulated sectors that make them suited to mediation? Regulated sectors are ripe for disputes. Whether it’s the energy, financial or telecoms sector, there are often…

Savvy litigators often tell their clients that “a bad settlement always beats a good litigation”. That may be partly because there is embarrassingly scant guidance in the literature, or even in the…

I (Bill) remember doing my first commercial mediation. I was 29, and in the presence of the four parties and their advisers I felt even younger. It was not lost on me that (as Suzanne Rab recently…

This is the second in a series of two posts about third party funding (TPF) of litigation Geoff's Part 1 looked at the principle of TPF. Now mediators Bill Marsh and Geoff Sharp get together to share…