Two interesting conferences will take place in Virginia during the month of March — one focusing on investor-state dispute prevention and the other on a variety of challenges and opportunities faced by Virginia mediators. Read more »
In our field, there are many more meetings, conventions, conferences, workshops and trainings than there is work. It’s impossible to attend them all and it’s sometimes hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. Three instances of real “wheat” are coming up that should be on the short list for corporate end-users of conflict resolution tools, and for the attorneys who counsel them. Read more »
Wilbur Hicks, Ombuds of the International Monetary Fund (and before that for Shell and Princeton) has directed our attention to the Ombuds Blog. Even a cursory review shows that this is a robust and (for me at least) hitherto overlooked resource for commercial conflict managers. Read more »
The firm of Ogletree Deakins and St. Louis University recently held an all-day Employee Dispute Resolution Symposium at the University’s very beautiful Busch Student Center. The proceedings were well-attended and it was a privilege for me to be invited to present the opening remarks.
The comments of the various speakers, many from in-house corporate programs and some from outside attorneys, suggested that the “center” has shifted over the past few years, and that comprehensive conflict management programs that seriously address employee concerns rather than gearing up for employment arbitration are very much the norm these days. Read more »