Fisher and Ury’s Getting to Yes (first published in 1981 and never out of print)  was followed ten years later by Ury’s Getting Past No.  Both made a significant impact on our negotiation preparation and engagement. These texts, and others that followed, changed the landscape of negotiation in ways that have been remarkable and enduring ..read more

The late Michael Leathes’ enormous contribution to the development and uptake of non-determinative dispute resolution processes will be celebrated at and long after his memorial service in Oxford in March of this year. I recently found an email I received from him dated May 18, 2014. Michael’s message “It has to be said that while ..read more

“Beat your ploughshares into swords, and your pruning-hooks into spears.” Surely some mistake, I thought; shouldn’t it be the other way round? Swords into ploughshares and spears into pruning-hooks? It was during Evensong at the magnificent Liverpool Cathedral a few weeks ago that this reading from the Old Testament Book of the prophet Joel caught ..read more

In recent months, Brazilian startups such as Hurb and 123 Milhas, two prominent players in the country’s tourism market, have encountered significant financial challenges. These companies offered highly attractive promotional travel packages at exceptionally low prices, creating a large customer base. However, when the financial pressures grew, both companies found themselves unable to fulfill some ..read more

Culture shapes how we see the world. It affects perceptions, behaviours, and expectations even within the context of mediation. In a world characterized by diversity, understanding the nuances of cultural influence is important for effective mediation as culture can significantly impact the process. A panel entitled “Cultural Context in Mediation”, hosted by the Thailand Arbitration Center (THAC) on 29 March 2024, which I moderated, explored the important topic of the crucial role of cultural considerations in mediation. In the panel discussion, Henning Glaser (Director and Head of Mediation C ..read more

On April 25th, 2024, I had the privilege to speak at the V SIFRA Seminar on Innovations and Tools for Revenue Recovery and Alternative Revenues (SIFRA). The event, acronym for Fiscal Innovations Seminar, is a renowned gathering that brings together bright minds to discuss ideas, research, and innovative solutions, always with a focus on municipal perspectives. Organized by Dr. Ricardo Almeida, Municipal Attorney and Legal Advisor to the Brazilian Association of Municipal Tax Offices (ABRASF), The seminar aims not only to address public finances but also to delve into local economic dynamics an ..read more

  I’ve just been in London presenting at the terrific UIA Mediation Forum  and my daily train travels constantly exposed me to this image. As the conference themes developed, the image took on an even more significant meaning for me. Let me explain. An early speaker, Kimberlee Kovach (Founding Officer and Past Chair of the American Bar Association DR Section) took us on a journey tracing how mediation became part of the successful dispute resolution process in the United States. She noted the significance of the 1976 Pound Conference – a belated apology by the profession and the jud ..read more

Rafal Morek’s post last month, Investor-state disputes: how arbitration and mediation can intertwine to provide more resonant solutions, emphasized the increasing use of mediation to resolve investor-state disputes, albeit still confined to a small number of cases under the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) Convention. As the late Professor Derek Roebuck noted in The Myth of Modern Mediation in 2007: “Everywhere in the Ancient Greek world, including Ptolemaic Egypt, arbitration was normal and in arbitration the mediation element was primary.” Switching hats So ..read more

As I mentioned before in some posts here at Kluwer, according to the Brazilian National Council of Justice, there are close to 90 million lawsuits currently in course in the country. Moreover, on average, it takes around 10 years for a lawsuit to reach closure if all appeals have been exhausted. Interestingly enough , one of the biggest litigators in Brazil is the State. According to a study published by Instituto de Ensino e Pesquisa Insper, by the end of 2020, Brazil has already exceeded the mark of R$ 5.5 trillion in tax debts undergoing judicial and administrative disputes at Federal, Stat ..read more

Mediation has long been used as a method of resolving disputes. Indeed, the practice of combining mediation and arbitration by the same neutral has been traced back to ancient Greece and Ptolemaic Egypt[1]. In his paper “Varieties of Dispute Processing”, presented to the 1976 Pound Conference, Harvard Professor Frank E.A. Sander proposed that, instead of regarding litigation as the default, disputants might be steered to the dispute resolution processes appropriate to the circumstances of their dispute. His paper envisioned “by the year 2000, not merely a courthouse but a Dispute Resolution C ..read more