Process
The shape of an engagement.
Booking a neutral commits a client to a date, a cost and a process. This is the whole of it: the five steps, what each one needs from the parties, and what happens if the matter does not settle.
Step by step
Five steps.
Intake to conclusion, with the timing each step usually takes.
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Confidential intake
Day 0
A scheduled call to scope the matter, identify the parties, and run conflicts.
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Engagement and framing
Days 1–7
Terms of appointment, the issues in dispute, and who attends.
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Pre-session exchange
Days 7–21
Briefs and documents, exchanged in advance so the session starts informed.
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The session
Days 21–30
Half day or full day, in person or by video.
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Conclusion
Day 30 onward
Minutes of settlement — or an award, where the process is arbitral.
This is the typical shape of an engagement, not a commitment. Timing depends on party and counsel availability, which I do not control.
Conflicts
Checked at step one.
Conflicts are run on the intake call, before anything is agreed. The check needs the full legal name of every party, the parent or affiliate actually behind the dispute where that is a different entity, and the names of counsel on each side.
Send those with the request rather than at the call. An intake call that stops to collect names is an intake call that gets repeated.
Confidentiality
What stays in the room.
I am a member of the ADR Institute of Canada. Its Code of Ethics applies to every member, and it says: A Member shall be faithful to the relationship of trust and
confidentiality inherent in the office of arbitrator or mediator.
That is the obligation. This is mine, in a mediation:
What a party tells me in caucus stays in that caucus until they tell me I may use it, and I do not carry a number across the hall that I was not given to carry.
The other outcome
If it does not settle.
The question counsel ask before committing a client's day.
Then it does not settle, and that is an outcome the day is built to reach cleanly rather than a failure of it. What gets recorded is what the parties agree to record — the issues that closed and the ones that did not. A matter narrowed to two questions is worth having even when it is not what you came for.
Where parties want a binding end if the mediation does not produce one, that is med-arb — and it is agreed at the start rather than reached for at the end:
The switch is agreed in writing before the mediation phase begins, or I do not take the appointment. I will not convert a mediation into an arbitration on the day because the room has run out of road.
Next step
Start with a call.
Tell me the shape of the matter and who is involved, and I will tell you whether I am the right neutral for it. Inquiries are answered within two business days.