Improvisation

Global Legal Post recently carried an article intriguingly entitled “Lawyers find Eureka moments in the shower". Sadly the article itself lacked the slightly salacious promise of its title. …

I have never been a great fan of mediator's proposals. I took the view that the mediator's job, done well, was to help the parties to come to a solution themselves. Party autonomy and all that…

“The key to doing well lies not in overcoming others, but in eliciting their co-operation." Robert Axelrod “Although negotiation takes place every day, it is not easy to do well. Standard strategies…

Hong Kong mediator, lawyer and poet, TK Iu, was introduced to readers by fellow blogger Joel Lee earlier this year. TK's first published poetic piece on mediation was entitled, 'A Mediator's Prayer',…

I write here about two contrasting experiences which have, for me, underscored the richness of the mediation process. In one mediation, involving business partners with an ongoing management issue,…

  The legendary cellist Pablo Casals was once asked why he continued to practice at the age of 90. “Because” he replied, “I think I’m making progress”. It is an extraordinary acknowledgement from a…

I am indebted to my friend and fellow mediator Mark Lomas QC for sending me the following email recently: ‘I have come across what I think may be one of the earliest recorded mediations in England,…

Recently I had contact with the Design Thinking process, which is a creative problem solving approach that attempts to bring together tools and techniques from several disciplines and apply them to…

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…