There's still time to get your abstract in! Please submit your abstract by 3 November 2025. The Australasian Dispute Resolution Research Network is pleased to be hosting its 13th research roundtable on 27-28 November 2025 at Monash University Clayton campus, Melbourne. The roundtable is supported by the Faculty of Law at Monash University and the Australian Centre for Justice Innovation…

John Lande This article has been republished with permission. The original publication can be located within Indisputably. The quality of AI outputs depends on users’ skill in inputting good prompts. That’s the premise of my new article: The Art of AI Prompting in Law and Dispute Resolution Practice. It provides practical guidance about how to use AI tools responsibly, ethically, and effectively.

By Dr Samantha Hardy and Dr Judith Rafferty This article has been republished (with minor amendments) with permission. The original publication can be found at The Conflict Management Academy. Apologies can be transformative. A genuine “I’m sorry” has the potential to mend trust, restore dignity, and signal a willingness to move forward. Yet in practice, many mediators have sat through sessions where one party waits, sometimes desperately, for an apology that never arrives.

The Australasian Dispute Resolution Research Network is pleased to be hosting its 13th research roundtable on 27-28 November 2025 at Monash University Clayton campus, Melbourne. The roundtable is supported by the Faculty of Law at Monash University and the Australian Centre for Justice Innovation. We are accepting paper proposal's for the Roundtable. We welcome proposals that consider dispute resolution from a scholarly, critical and/or empirical perspective.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly part of daily life in legal and mediation practice. Mediators and lawyers (“practitioners”) may wonder how they can use it to provide good client service and remain competitive in the marketplace. Indeed, some practitioners may wonder whether they’ll be able to do so in the future without using AI. Recent data show that lawyers’ use of AI in the US is growing rapidly – and many practitioners will need to learn how to use it effectively to succeed in a changing market. 

Samantha HardyThis article has been republished with permission. The original publication can be found at The Conflict Management Academy. The Conflict Management Academy has been running “The Mediator’s Dilemma Series” events this year, in which mediators explore a challenging hypothetical and discuss how they would deal with the dilemmas at various stages of the process. These events have been well attended and the discussions enlightening (and sometimes heated!) but what struck me after having reviewed the sessions so far is that the ethical decision making process used by participants was, well to be frank, rather ad hoc.

John LandeThis article has been republished and adapted with permission. The original publication can be located within Indisputably. Imagine you’re a mediator and someone tells you what’s troubling them. They’re deeply upset about a product they believe poses serious risks. They cite past harms, question whether it should ever have been introduced, and urge that it be removed from the market or tightly restricted.

Dr Claire Holland Why Mediator Dilemmas Matter Mediation is often described as structured and principled. An approach that empowers parties to find their own way through conflict with the support of a neutral third party. At its best, mediation provides a space where voice, dignity, and autonomy are protected. Yet, despite this aspirational framing, the reality of practice is rarely straightforward.

Samantha HardyThis article has been republished with permission. The original publication can be found at The Conflict Management Academy. In my work with clients in conflict, I constantly find that they have missed many opportunities to manage conflict more effectively. In particular, they often fail to set appropriate boundaries (or ANY boundaries) to allow themselves to be at their best in conflict situations.

Massimiliano Ferrari's creation of Medianos, a board game designed to help parties align with "interests and needs" rather than "positions", demonstrates measurable success in Western mediation training contexts (Tambù Creative Team, 2023). The board game is designed to effectively teach collaborative problem-solving skills and transform adversarial thinking patterns. Ferrari's intent to democratize mediation knowledge through accessible gameplay merits recognition (Gowers, 2025).

Pauline Collins and David Spencer This article has been republished and adapted with permission. The original publication can be located within the Australasian Dispute Resolution Journal. Despite people negotiating disputes since time immemorial, the formalisation of dispute resolution in Australia dates back only around half a century. Prior to this there was litigation, compromise offers and informal settlement negotiations. Dispute resolution also referred to as alternative, assisted, additional dispute resolution or just dispute management now entails a growing range of approaches to assist parties in resolving or managing their dispute.

For several decades, the Australian family dispute resolution literature has examined the operation of family mediation and other family dispute resolution procedures. Much of this data comes from funded evaluations and projects following the Family Law Amendment (Shared Parental Responsibilities) Act 2006. However, the English and Welsh literature on contemporary family mediation is limited in comparison. Much of our research has remained focused on the court system, even though many, if not most, people involved in child arrangements or post-separation financial matters deal with their disputes outside of it.

Samantha HardyThis article has been republished with permission. The original publication can be found at The Conflict Management Academy. Inspired by Jennifer L. Schulz (2023). Mediator Liability 23 Years Later: The “Three C’s” of Case Law, Codes, & Custom. Ottawa Law Review / Revue de droit d’Ottawa, 55(1):151–186. Available at:  A Quiet Assumption For many of us working in the mediation field, there’s a quiet assumption we rarely question: that we’re not likely to be sued for what happens in a mediation room.

27-28 November 2025 Monash University Call for Paper Proposals The Australasian Dispute Resolution Research Network is pleased to be hosting its 13th research roundtable on 27-28 November 2025 at Monash University Clayton campus, Melbourne. The roundtable is supported by the Faculty of Law at Monash University and the Australian Centre for Justice Innovation. The roundtables are designed to encourage a collaborative and supportive research environment in which papers are work-shopped and discussed in detail.

Responding to @Massimiliano Ferrari's recent post sharing @Dr. Anna Maria Bernard's powerful insights about digital conflicts in Basilicata. Here's what we're seeing as Medianos spreads globally... Massimiliano Ferrari's sharing of Dr. Anna Maria Bernard's insights from Basilicata Region perfectly captures what those who understand transformation are witnessing worldwide - the emerging need for approaches that naturally dissolve digital-age conflicts. Dr. Bernard's experience with Medianos confirms what you may already be sensing as this remarkable method continues spreading across continents.

John LandeThis article has been republished and adapted with permission. The original publication can be located within Indisputably. Imagine doing your work without word processing, spell checkers, email, the internet, search engines, voicemail, cell phones, or Zoom. That’s how you’ll probably feel in the not-too-distant future about working without artificial intelligence (AI). Innovations often seem radical at first. In time, people just take them for granted.

By Eunice Chua (CEO, FIDReC) and Rachel Lim (Intern, FIDReC) The context of consumer financial disputes Tom went on an overseas holiday with his friends, and they went out to a pub on their last night. They drank till the early hours of the morning. Tom was in a celebratory mood and paid for everyone’s drinks with his credit card. He and his friends left for their hotel at 3am.

Dan Berstein & Robert Bergman This article has been republished with permission and the original publication can be located at Mediate.com. It can be difficult to get on the same page when you are caught in the middle of an adversarial dispute. Each party has their own biases – they want to win! Amidst a deluge of seemingly endless “facts” to pick from, sometimes it can feel like the parties are living in entirely different universes.

John LandeThis article has been republished and adapted with permission. The original publication can be located within Indisputably. We all know that it’s bad to be biased, right? Wrong. That assumption is its own bad bias. Biases are inevitable – in humans and bots alike. Some biases are harmful. Others are helpful. Many are neutral. But bias itself is unavoidable.

John LandeThis article has been republished and adapted with permission. The original publication can be located within the University of Missouri School of Law Journal. How Can You Turn Adversarial Attorneys into Quasi-Mediators?, my Theory Meets Practice column in CPR’s Alternatives magazine, summarizes a discussion with members of the Association of Attorney-Mediators. It builds on Creating Educational Value by Teaching Law Students to be Quasi-Mediators…

Although the legal profession prides itself on rigorous training and high standards, recent research reveals a gap between education and practice. On 9 April 2025, the New South Wales Legal Profession Admission Board (LPAB) released a research report conducted by Urbis that examined Practical Legal Training (PLT) in NSW (the report). This report offers crucial insights for legal educators, practitioners, and the profession as a whole as it provides a view of the current landscape of legal education.

By Imogen Stephenson This post is part of a series of the best blog posts written by undergraduate law students enrolled in 2024 in Non-Adversarial Justice at Monash Law. The establishment of the Yoorrook Justice Commission in 2021 as Australia’s first formal truth-telling process into historical and ongoing injustices experienced by First Nations people marked a significant milestone in the nation’s journey towards reconciliation.

John LandeThis article has been republished and adapted with permission. The original publication can be located within Indisputably. Until January 27, I hadn’t planned to develop an AI tool for dispute resolution. That changed when I Zoomed into a program where Susan Guthrie showed how AI could be used in mediation. A brief conversation at the end shifted from mediating disputes to improving writing – and that’s when a light bulb lit up in my head.

Presented by Dr Mary Tumelty, visiting scholar to the Australian Centre for Justice Innovation, Monash Lawwith guest commentator, Mr Nick Mann, Polaris Lawyers Date: Monday, 31 March 2025Time: 12:00pm - 1:30pmLunch provided with seminar commencing at 12:30pmVenue: Monash Law Staff Library Clayton Campus, or Zoom (link to be provided on the day)   Please register via this…