The clearest lesson of the pandemic is that we are all connected. Supply chains and the movement of goods and people by air, land and water mean we are all part of a huge interactive web.

Now, businesses around the world are trying to combat the multiple impacts of covid-19, economic peril and, in the USA, racial injustice. Just as the challenges and new issues mount, the courts have had to cope with slowdowns and lockdowns. In an astoundingly quick transition, ADR providers and neutrals have shifted focus to providing dispute resolution services remotely online. They have issued protocols and set up processes, and many online mediations and arbitrations have already been conducted to a positive reception by many prior sceptics. Delay and backlog do not have to hamper an economic recovery that depends in part on cost-effective and efficient dispute resolution taking place now. We knew that businesses with cross-border disputes would require better and less expensive ways to address both routine and bet-the-company disputes, but the need is not yet being fully met. Help is at hand. An arb-med-arb process resulting in a consent award is a solution to an expressed need and it can happen right now (even remotely) before the long process of approval wends its way to completion for the UN Convention on International Settlement Agreements resulting from Mediation (Singapore Convention).