International Institute For Conflict Prevention & Resolution

This week, Mike sits down with Santa Monica attorney-neutral-educator Kenneth Cloke, for the first of a two-part conversation. Ken goes in depth about mediation style and processes, but really, it's about the hormones—specifically, the "cuddle hormone," oxytocin. You’ll find out how his research into the psychology of conflict led to investigating and cataloguing the potentially profound effect the hormone has on how you deal with the person sitting across the table from you. Ken is founder and leader of Mediators Beyond Borders, a Pittsburgh nonprofit through which experienced mediators volunteer their skills world-wide to improve conflict resolution capacity and support alternative approaches to resolving interpersonal, political, economic, social, ethnic and religious differences.

Host Michael McIlwrath discusses the politics of disputes with Jenny Beer, author of the seminal, cross-discipline guide, The Mediator's Handbook, which she co-authored in 1982.

Australian mediator John Wade returns to IDN to tell more of his mediation strategies to get around the hard bargainers, the obstructionists, the stone-wallers, and the naysayers.

Bay area educator and consultant Clark Freshmen discusses how he trains people to spot emotions in negotiation. "It's like mind reading," says Mike McIlwrath. It's also about lie detection. Freshman is a consultant at the noted authorities on the subject, Oakland, Calif.'s Paul Ekman Group. This week’s podcast discusses facial muscles, eyebrows, early indicators of anger, and other signs of "universal expressions of emotions."

Bennett G. Picker, a partner in Philadelphia's Stradley Ronon Stevens & Young, LLP, returns to IDN for his second visit. This week, Ben explains to Mike the philosophy behind his firm's approach to litigation, which earned it the CPR Institute's first Law Firm Award for Excellence in ADR. Ben talks about moving clients to ADR. The Stradley approach, he says, involves "looking at every dispute as a problem to be resolved."

Massimo Mantovani, general counsel of oil and gas giant ENI, of Paris, joins Mike this week to discuss how he manages litigation, including what he looks for in outside counsel, as well as his company's view of arbitration.

This week's IDN is the second of two parts on how the International Chamber of Commerce's International Court of Arbitration in Paris handles cases. Mike's guest is Francesca Mazza, an ICC senior case manager. Last week covered the initial stages of ICC arbitration proceedings. This week's episode picks up with the "terms of reference," and moves through to the tribunal's award.

This week, in the first of two parts, Mike goes behind the scenes at the International Chamber of Commerce's International Court of Arbitration in Paris with Francesca Mazza, an ICC senior case manager. The two episodes comprehensively cover ICC case management practices. This week's episode focuses on how the ICC's teams are organized, and how they work with the secretary general and the court, as well as common problems with requests for arbitration, and proceedings' general timing.

This week, Mike analyzes ADR in Malaysia with litigator Sai-Yeang Ng, a partner in Kuala Lumpur's Raja, Darryl & Loh. After setting out the statutory and common law basis for practice in the Southeast Asia nation, Sai-Yeang discusses how cases can migrate to ADR in a country where the equivalent of $15,000 in litigation costs is considered a costly case.

Bias is a little bit of a four-letter word when it comes to arbitration, London practitioner Sophie Nappert tells host Mike McIlwrath in this week's podcast. But bias also includes the basics about the process that parties and their representatives need to know: where the arbitrator is coming from, and the frame from which the arbitrator will view the issues. Sophie and Mike analyze parties'different cultural perceptions of arbitrator bias in international arbitration, leading to advice on how to deploy the strategic use of bias in their ADR practices.

Mediation is a name called Opportunity: This week, Mike discusses party negotiation strategies from the viewpoint of veteran mediator/trainer Bennett G. Picker, a partner in Philadelphia's Stradley Ronon Stevens & Young, LLP. Ben provides strategic thinking on how parties can identify and take advantage of opportunities when negotiating disputes, and how mediation presents an ideal forum for creating these opportunities. This IDN episode dissects party negotiating positions from a master's point of view, and shows how strategic thinking about something as basic as offers and counteroffers can shift the bargaining to a party's side of the table. Listen closely. Not wanting to miss an opportunity even when discussing a hypothetical dispute, Ben e-mailed IDN after the recording to note that, on reflection, the defendant might have even greater success at the end of the negotiations if it were to start with a counter-intuitively higher--yet more credible--initial counteroffer of $1.2 million, as opposed to the $7

This week, Mike is joined by Australian John Wade, an educator and practitioner who tell us about truly terrifying negotiation adversaries, and when you need to walk away, permanently.

This week, Mike is joined by Harvard Business School's Michael A. Wheeler, a leading negotiation author and theorist. They share detailed anecdotes on how companies--engines that generate disputes practice conflict resolution via elaborate institutionalized systems, by finding creative measures, and even down and dirty fast processes. And they discuss why relying on Lucky Generals isn't a bad way for supervising negotiating executives and managers.

This week, Mike discusses current arbitration practice trends with Jason Fry, who took over last October as Secretary General of the International Chamber of Commerce's International Court of Arbitration in Paris. Jason provides insights into the nature of ICC cases and administration, and an overview of operations at one of the leading international ADR providers.

Mike examines ADR in the booming Singapore economy with Christopher Lau, a senior counsel at Three Verulam Buildings, which is a London-based barristers' chambers. Christopher is in the firm's Singapore office, and is a Fellow of the Singapore Institute of Arbitrators; the United Kingdom's Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, and the Australian Centre for International Commercial Arbitration.

This week, IDN examines the dispute resolution methods of early societies, and how they evolved in the last 10,000 years into the mechanisms that we see in today's functioning societies: Mike's guest is American Museum of Natural History curator, anthropologist Robert L. Carniero. Their wide-ranging discussion covers: the evolution of the state, and the orderly introduction of legal systems with formal methods of conflict resolution; dispute resolution in societies that have remained in clusters of small, autonomous groups; and conflict resolution's presence and importance in keeping larger groups together and productive.

This week, join Mike for a discussion with former law firm partner Mark Kantor, of Washington, D.C., as he discusses his move to full-time arbitrator, and the ins-and-outs of putting together an international arbitration tribunal, including everything from the logistics to the ethics rules.

Mike talks with Zaid Al-Ali, who is advising the United Nations on legal developments in Iraq, on drafting a new Iraqi constitution and efforts at improving Iraq's methods for dealing with international commercial disputes.

This week, join Michael McIlwrath as he discusses litigation, mediation, and arbitration in Greece with attorney Pericles Stroubos.

This week, join Mike as he discusses the state of the art of Dutch mediation with Manon Schonewille, managing director of ACB Mediation Corporate Conflict Management, in the Hague, Netherlands.