Business Conflict Blog

The mediation scene in Italy sometimes seems like the upper balcony at La Scala:  Lots of opinions snd shouting but uncertain direction or authority.  Happily, Italy is graced with some real mediation leadership, some of whom are young, enegetic, persistent, articulate and smart.  One such is Alessandro Bruni.

Alessandro has recently posted a two-part article on the current state of mediation in Italy – post-lawyers’ strike, post-European Directive — that is informative and illuminating.  It can be found here and here, and it is hoped that all those interested in this vital part of the legal and economic European scene will devote attention to it.

Tags: Mediation, Public Policy

Mediators are trained to detect subtle opportunities for value-adding integrative outcomes: separating positions from interests, offering out-of-the-box suggestions, and looking for ways that the parties can find mutual benefit.

For me, that ended in an early-career EEOC mediation where the ADA claimant, having been offered every accommodation to her disability, refused to withdraw the claim unless she was paid $600,000 — more than twenty times her salary. 

In mediation, as in life, money talks.  And Dwight Golann has recently reported empirical research backing up that conclusion.

Read more »

Tags: Add new tag, Mediation

Two years ago, a session was held at the Buenos Aires IBA Annual Conference on the feasibility of creating a set of rules for the mediation of disputes between investors and States.  The ICSID Conciliation Rules are broadly acknowledged to be clumsy and have seldom, if ever, been used.  For the past year, an IBA Task Force comprising four subcommittees has been working on drafting such rules, and its work was presented in Dubai for comment from the body. Read more »

Tags: Mediation

The tireless Hanna Tuempel of the Dispute Resolution Services of the International Chamber of Commerce reminds us that the 7th ICC International Commercial Mediation Competition takes place in Paris on February 3-8, 2012.

In the competition, law students are faced with complex interational commercial problems that they must attempt to resolve by mediation conducted by the ICC’s ADR Rules.  Around 60 student teams and over 120 professional mediators are expected to participate in around 200 mock mediation sessions.  Students’ performance is evaluated by some of the world’s leading dispute resolution specialists who participate in the competition as judges.

Registration is now open.  If you attend, can you let us know how it went?

Tags: ADR Institutions, Mediation, Teaching, Training