The COVID-19 pandemic has brought new challenges to all manner of dispute resolution. Whether it is becoming accustomed to addressing a judge from your bedroom via Zoom, taking instruction from your client on WhatsApp, or trying to guess your opponent’s hobbies from their home office bookshelves, the new world of remote-working has brought new difficulties and forms of workplace and entertainment in equal measure. What has not changed, however, is the demand from parties to resolve their disputes expeditiously and efficiently, including through mediation. This begs the question: how do mediations and practitioners need to adapt in this brave new world? It is likely to be here to stay, so here are five top tips for surviving and getting the most from a virtual mediation.
Read more[PODCAST] Reflecting on Nine Months of Virtual ADR
A special podcast from JAMS featuring neutrals Adrienne Publicover and David Ross on their experiences and lessons learned since shifting to virtual mediations.
Nine months after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the legal community overall has adapted to working in a new environment. For ADR professionals and many attorneys, that means mastering the art of virtual mediation. While some have experienced a more seamless transition than others, everyone had to confront often unexpected obstacles and turn them into opportunities to be successful.
Read moreToday’s Business: Refining the process of alternative dispute resolution during a pandemic
With the COVID-19 pandemic, the world has changed, and the Alternative Dispute Resolution process along with it. Over the last decade, ADR, including nonbinding mediation and arbitration, has been in increased demand among business litigants. Today, these sessions have gone “virtual.”Under non-binding mediation, a “neutral” individual facilitates a negotiation between the parties to reach a compromise. The matter can only settle if the parties agree to terms, meaning either party can walk away if it is not satisfied with a proposed outcome. Arbitration, by contrast, is a private trial before an arbitrator who sits as a judge. In most arbitration, the arbitrator, often selected by agreement of the parties, hears testimony, receives documentary evidence and issues a binding, written opinion. Unless an arbitrator exceeds his or her authority, or issues a decision that is arbitrary or capricious, the decision will not be overturned by the courts.
Read moreGetting to grips with online mediation
It is eight months since I first blogged about the impact that COVID-19 was having on dispute resolution in England in a piece aptly called, Adjudicating in the shadow of coronavirus. (I don’t know why, but that title always makes me think of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s book, Love in the time of cholera. I’ve no idea why, other than the lyrical way the title sounds. Certainly, the stories are worlds apart… but I digress…)
That blog was written at the start of the first national lockdown and I followed it a few weeks later with a piece about the lessons I’d learnt in those first few weeks. By the time Jonathan came to write his October post, A few lessons I have learned from resolving disputes during the pandemic, I’d say we had become “old hands” at this on-line stuff.
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