I recently attended the annual American Bar Association Dispute Resolution conference in San Francisco. Several themes emerged (for me) as fairly critical for modern lawyers. Here’s a top ten.…
Forty-five years ago, Professor Christopher Stone published a paper entitled “Should Trees have Standing? Towards Legal Rights for Natural Objects”. [45 Southern California Law Review 450–501.] Two…
I have given a little thought as to whether my work as a mediator fits into one of the well-known “styles.” I do not see myself as an evaluative or directive mediator, but I do sometimes tell clients…
Conciliation is attracting more and more users for its prided features as an easily accessible, cost- and time-effective procedure for dispute resolution. It is supported and also evidenced in the…
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…
Morton Deutsch, the great social psychologist of common sense, explained the difference between competition and cooperation thus: "if you’re positively linked with another, then you sink or swim…
Public Service Warning: This blog post will contain spoilers. If you have not watched Arrival and intend to, please do not read any further.
I’m a movie addict. I admit it. And I am ashamed to say…
In the first of a series of blogs on the business of mediation, Stephen Walker, author of
Setting Up In Business As A Mediator (Bloomsbury Dec 2015), discusses whether mediation is a business at all…
Despite my hectic life over the last 12 months, I still find time for one of my favorite hobbies: Cooking. However, I do not think that I have as much time to cook as I would like, watching TV…
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…
