Mediators’ Conduct

Some years ago my wife, Dr. Rosemary Howell, saw an aboriginal speaking stick, 82 centimetres long, at an art gallery on the Queensland Gold Coast. She asked whether it might be possible to obtain a…

“I’ve been trying to tell you, but you didn’t listen. You’ve got to go down more deeply and take more time, you’re rushing it and it’s too superficial. You’re hardly disturbing the surface. You’ll…

(This post is being republished because of technical problems when it was first published) The recently reported Australian case of Ku-ring-gai Council v Ichor Constructions Pty Ltd [2018] NSWSC 610 …

When you study languages, or gain fluency in more than one, at some point you realise that each language has its own terms that are not translatable. It is about the way language thinks for us, and…

I write this in the aftermath of the really uplifting and wonderfully diverse conference which I had the privilege to host and chair recently in my home city, under the auspices of the International…

We finished module 2 of our flagship training course last week. One of our participants emailed me the next day: “I was driving up the road yesterday and mulling over one aspect of the mediation…

It's not easy to blog once a month, even on a subject I love. Often I sit down to write with no real ideas or inspiration. Sometimes I end up that way too (as you may have noticed!). It becomes easy…

As the year comes to an end, I am expanding upon a story to which I referred in a previous blog, in the hope that it may provide a couple of useful reminders of what we do as mediators. I had eaten a…

A whole day of mediation without a “joint meeting”. The only time the lawyers met was to begin drafting the settlement agreement. The experts played no part. The day before, the principals had…