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Dubai Arbitration Week 9 - 13 November 2026

Event Themes: Other

Mediation Advocacy in Commercial Disputes: What Lawyers Need to Know to Be Effective — with a Focus on Family Businesses

Mediation is playing an increasingly prominent role in resolving commercial disputes across the region, yet many lawyers remain far more comfortable advocating in an arbitral tribunal or a courtroom than in a mediation room. The skills that win in an adversarial forum — combative framing, positional bargaining, playing every card close to the chest — can actively work against a client in mediation. Effective mediation advocacy requires a different toolkit, and lawyers who master it are able to secure better, faster, and more durable outcomes for their clients.

This seminar is designed for practising lawyers who advise clients in commercial disputes and want to sharpen their mediation advocacy skills. Drawing on real-world examples — including the particularly high-stakes and emotionally complex world of family business disputes — the session will equip attendees with practical, transferable techniques they can apply across their commercial practice.

Topics will include:
The advocate’s role in mediation: how it differs from advocacy in arbitration or litigation, and why the same tactics don’t translate
Preparing clients for mediation: managing expectations, identifying real interests behind stated positions, and building settlement authority
Persuasion techniques for joint sessions and private caucuses
Common tactical errors that stall or derail settlement — and how to avoid them
Case study focus: mediating commercial disputes involving family-owned businesses — where shareholder, governance and succession issues intersect with commercial claims, and where relationships (not just remedies) are often at stake
Practical takeaways lawyers can apply in their next mediation, regardless of sector

Timing:
Registration: 10:30
Panel Discussion: 11:00
Networking & refreshments: 12:15 onwards

Format: Interactive panel discussion with practitioner insights, case study and networking reception.

Chair:
Aseel Zimmo, Mediator

Speakers:
Nicole Buncher, Counsel, Clifford Chance
Christine Maksoud, Mediator
Henrietta Jackson-Stops, Mediator, IPOS Mediation
Walid Chiniaria, Family Business Advisor
Ahmad Chit, Partner, Grant Thornton

Pick Your Fight – Civil Law or Common Law – Arbitration or Courts?

With civil law courts, common law courts and arbitration all forming part of the UAE disputes landscape, choosing the right forum and the governing law are increasingly a strategic decision.

This interactive session will explore the issues that arise when those forums intersect, including challenges to arbitration agreements, jurisdiction, court intervention, interim relief, parallel proceedings and enforcement. It will also consider when arbitration genuinely offers an advantage over litigation, and how parties should approach forum and governing law selection when drafting dispute resolution clauses.

Following a short fireside conversation with a leading disputes figure, the session will move into a fast-paced, audience-led debate, with senior moderators testing practical scenarios and inviting perspectives from practitioners, arbitrators and in-house counsels.