Practical Challenges for Mediators

I will never forget my first day in a mediation class where one word that reverberated over a hundred times was “interest, interest and interest”! “Focus on underlying interests’ was the phrase that…

Picking up where I left off last post, I want to discuss what I consider to be a major problem with the Ontario Commercial Mediation Act, 2010 (OCMA) relating to the admissibility of evidence of what…

 The ICC International Commercial Mediation Competition is the only moot I know of devoted to international commercial mediation and it will take place in Paris in early February. It's an annual…

As I write these lines, I am working on a commercial mediation project in the Pacific nation of Samoa – yes the one that has just jumped across the international dateline. My blog post today is a…

We live in an age when we all seem to try to get more out of our time. We try to expand time by doing things more quickly and more efficiently than we could before we had airplanes, computers, and…

As I open each mediation session I remind everyone that the mediation is “confidential”, “without prejudice”, “off the record”.  I acknowledged that these three concepts don’t mean precisely the same…

As we all know mediation is an interest-based method to resolve conflicts. Nevertheless it is not always easy to know: • which interests drive parties into a conflict • which interests make them want…

You have a choice to make.  In front of you stand two doors.  If you go through the door on the right you will receive $20.  If you choose the left door you will have a one in five chance of…

One of the privileges and perils of working as a mediator in Scotland is that we get a close-up view of developments in England and Wales. In an ideal world this should allow us (pop. 5 million) to…