Arbitration & Mediation

What It Takes To Be A Great Mediation Lawyer

Posted on April 16, 2008
One of the worst looks for a mediation counsel is when the capacity for independent thought is lost. I see it only occasionally.This could be because the client is a bully or counsel is working from a position of greed or lack of experience.My own view is that when it does happen, it's usually because the lawyer is lazy and has failed to manage the client's expectations as the case has matured from filing to mediation...

What Are Your Soft Skills?

Posted on April 15, 2008
This from the always entertaining Chuck Newton.It's for all us refugees from Big Law and those too sensible to go there in the first place... attorney-mediators will see many familiar flags.[click on the title of this post to read more...]

Mediation domain names for sale

Posted on April 15, 2008
This is just in from Deborah Schick Laufer, Manager for Mediation Services at the World Bank and Executive Director of the Federal ADR Network.It's your opportunity to buy some great dispute resolution related domain names. Contact the seller directly at AttorneyMediator@gmail...

Eleven step foreclosure mediation program model

Posted on April 13, 2008
Here for a generous resource (including a 100+ page Complete Foreclosure Mediation Program Model document) posted 11 April from the Supreme Court of Ohio if your community is grappling with your own version of the 2008 debt crisis.The model, which includes processes, forms and other documents, focuses on residential foreclosure cases and contains options to enable courts to make modifications based on available mediation resources while also meeting the needs of their communities...

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Demand for in-prison restorative justice conferences

Posted on April 12, 2008
Interested in Restorative Justice?Read about this project to fund restorative justice processes in NZ prisons, and how the demand for in-prison conferences is increasing with two-thirds of all requests coming from prisoners, with the rest coming from the victims...

The changing nature of the plenary session in mediation

Posted on April 09, 2008
I couldn't disagree more with this post from Hull & Hull's excellent Toronto Estate Law Blog but what the hell, read it and weep."However, plenary sessions have largely changed. It is now widely recognized that allowing counsel and parties to make opening statements only inflames the situation...

Dreaming? Or living the dream?

Posted on April 09, 2008
"Hi Mr Sharp, I was given your name to call. I was wondering if you ah... had time to meet up... ah, just wanting to pick your brains about starting out as a mediator - coffee's on me... "Well, to save us all some time and money, can I just get this off my chest...

Four Ways to Assure Mediator Quality

Posted on April 08, 2008
In response to a request I made of Prof Michael Moffitt over at Indisputably in my post DR Works In Progress he has now put his paper The Four Ways to Assure Mediator Quality (and why none of them work) up on the web.He gave this paper at Harvard Law School a while back...

The good, the bad, and the ugly of negotiators

Posted on April 08, 2008
New Zealand mediator and IAM Fellow, Deborah Clapshaw shares her observations on lawyers behaving badly in mediation - published in this week's NZLawyer Magazine Online.Deborah, a leading mediator, has a sophisticated take on lawyer behaviours in mediation touching on the empathiser, the abuser, the reciprocator, the liker and all stations in between...

Mediating Family Violence

Posted on April 07, 2008
Out today in the latest issue of the Mayhew-Hite Report on Dispute Resolution and the Courts Mediation Can Work for Juvenile-Perpetrated Domestic Violence: A Second Look at Family Violence Mediation is sure to be a controversial piece.Ohio State University Moritz College of Law student Paige Schweitzer argues that disputes involving domestic violence by children against parents are not benefited by traditional adversarial adjudication...

What next for Superman?

Posted on April 07, 2008
It's only fitting that a SuperLawyer (or at least a Top 40 California Neutral) mediates Superman's future trajectory in this IP dispute after the Court orders mediation within 60 days.[click on the title of this post to read more...]

Four New Mediation Blogs

Posted on April 06, 2008
It rained all weekend down in our corner of the globe, so we sat by the fire as winter arrived. I surfed the web without wires. The dog snored. And I found four new mediation blogs in varying states of repair. While there are too many adds for my taste - including one for the ladies from CatchHimAndKeepHim...

Yeah well, this says it all...

Posted on April 04, 2008
[click on the title of this post to read more...]

Bond Newsletter

Posted on April 04, 2008
Bond University's eagerly awaited Dispute Resolution Centre's April Newsletter is just out!Edited by John Wade, the letter always delivers sophisticated content for the experienced mediator.There's a good article on Overconfidence at mediation and in a follow up to my popular post The Secrets of Successful (and Unsuccessful) Mediators - a completed Questionnaire for Advanced Mediators that John gives to experienced mediators in his regular Advanced Mediation Courses about what they see and do at mediations...

Amanda Bucklow on how to make mediation agreements stick

Posted on April 01, 2008
Amanda Bucklow, who I introduced to readers of this blog recently with the launch of her Mediation Times, has usefully commented on an old post of mine about making mediated settlement agreements more durable.She says;'Hello Geoff This is a question I have pondered a great deal recently and in doing so I had two thoughts or even insights:Firstly, if you are a good mediator then you necessarily build excellent rapport and trust...

Next time I'm in the Big Apple

Posted on March 30, 2008
Next time I'm in the Big Apple and standing on the pavement oohing and ahhing at the Woolworth Building, 233 Broadway in my floral shirt, I'm going to pluck up the courage to ignore the sign and go through those heavy revolving doors to see attorney mediator David White of White & Associates who sent me this article by a retired New Jersey Judge, in response to my last post What a Judge needed to unlearn before he became a mediator...

What a Judge needed to unlearn before he became a mediator

Posted on March 28, 2008
Nice post over at the mysterious mediatorinthemaking.com (adventures in learning the practice of mediation) about the power of the process."I had a great learning moment in my PON class last night... Our student mediator shared that not being a judge, not being able to provide any legal advice or make any decisions about the case, he was uncertain where to go...

My toughest mediation

Posted on March 26, 2008
I learn a lot when other mediators tell war stories.Here are three well known UK mediators talking about a hard day at the office....:: Andrew Paton :: Jane Andrewartha :: Michel Kallipetis QC ::[click on the title of this post to read more...]

Networking for Introverted Mediators

Posted on March 25, 2008
Having been at a function last week where I felt like a fish out of water, I should have read this from Canadian legal research blog Slaw.ca before I went. [click on the title of this post to read more...]

Is Felony Mediation The Cure?

Posted on March 24, 2008
Interesting post yesterday about mediating crime over at the NY criminal defense blog Simple Justice with links going further into the story.[click on the title of this post to read more...]

More litigation = More mediation?

Posted on March 23, 2008
We are told the global downturn that this blog reported on some time ago (that's a train, stupid) has now arrived.Will it help or hinder mediators - does the increase in litigation that normally accompanies such events mean more mediation?Find out what some UK mediators think here...

The Mediation Times

Posted on March 20, 2008
Welcome to The Mediation Times, a brand new blog from UK commercial mediator Amanda Bucklow which she describes as a 'new blog for events, articles and opinions'.Although I couldn't immediately see how to do it, one of the innovative aspects of this blog is that experienced mediators can find the profiles of 'willing assistants' - and new mediators themselves can upload a profile...

The way mediators ask questions is absolutely front and centre to what we do.

Posted on March 19, 2008
When I'm training I often hold up an ordinary object, whatever happens to be about like a stapler or a chair, and ask people to fire questions at me about it.Through that simple exercise, ahead of many others, I can often recognise the future mediators in the room...

I guess Max Factor III had different

Posted on March 17, 2008
I guess Max Factor III had different ideas about what 'make-up' meant when he decided not to go into the family business and become a mediator.And that's our gain when he penned this interesting piece Combatting Hardball Negotiation Tactics in the Los Angeles Daily Journal in December 07...

You got a gong for WHAT??

Posted on March 17, 2008
My friend and colleague, Deputy Dean of Law at Bond University (Queensland, Australia) Professor Laurence Boulle has been appointed as a Member of the Order of Australia.The official blurb says it is 'for service to the law, particularly in the fields of mediation, alternative dispute resolution and education, and as a contributor to legal publications...

Please read this blog via RSS

Posted on March 13, 2008
RSS is more confusing than it needs to be but if you are starting to follow multiple blogs it's the only way to fly.What the heck is it? I hear you ask - well read here.If you have subscribed to blah... blah... by email update, that's great but what about trying RSS? - most of the hundreds of readers who read this blog do so via RSS...

3 edgy posts out there in the blogosphere today

Posted on March 11, 2008
From CResearch What about the litigation mediation creates? linking to an article that takes a systemic look at litigation about mediation.The article is by Hamline Professor James Coben who has been producing short videos illustrating mediation litigation for a while now...

Latest UK case on the costs and timing of mediation

Posted on March 10, 2008
My colleague Toby Gee, a barrister at Crown Office Chambers in London, has kindly provided me with a recent UK decision that has something to say on the costs and timing of mediation.The case is another in the line of cases, Halsey and Dunnett v Railtrack Plc, and said that a premature mediation simply wasted every body's time and could sometimes lead to a hardening of positions on both sides, which made any subsequent attempt at settlement doomed to fail...

Lawyers, rapists and mediators

Posted on March 09, 2008
This gives mediators a bad name."... it?s like they?ve just attached a straw and began sucking... the mediator sent us the following e-mail request for an update: ?How?s everything going??Invoice item: email to clients $20.00I wrote back and said ?everything is fine...

UN announces new 'on-call' mediation team

Posted on March 07, 2008
A quick-response UN Mediation Standby Team* has been set up by the United Nations to advise peace envoys in the field and is composed of six members, described as the ?world?s best people on the topic of mediation"And I'm very proud to say that the Senior Expert Mediator appointed to the group is a New Zealander - Andrew Ladley is an academic from here in Wellington - and he has regularly been seen flying off to exotic places like Cambodia, East Timor, Jamaica and Gambia to work in the election and constitution-making areas...

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