Rebranding, award-winning mediation and a whole lot of Zoom – it’s our 2020 review!.

By Henrietta Jackson-Stops

What’s that saying – the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry? Well thanks to Covid-19 that was certainly apt for many of us in 2020. For IPOS, it was the year we were planning to celebrate our silver anniversary – 25 years since Mark Jackson-Stops founded our mediation chambers in 1995. Instead, we celebrated a different kind of achievement – that of successfully mediating remotely through a pandemic!

Had I said to our mediators at the beginning of the year that they’d be mediating fully remotely for the foreseeable future they wouldn’t have believed me. When I’d previously mooted the idea of remote mediation the majority of them had said ‘Yes’, however there had been no real impetus to make the change. But necessity is the mother of invention and as terrifying as it was seeing our case numbers drop off a cliff in March, we were able to bounce back online. We even won an award as Best Civil & Commercial Remote Mediation Specialists.

The year of remote mediation

The year saw a first for our founder Mark, who addressed over 500 people in his first-ever webinar in which he shared his remote mediation experience. A case of teaching old dogs new tricks, perhaps? Many of our mediators took to social media to post photos of themselves in their home office, confidently set up with all the equipment needed to mediate remotely.

Our online mediations involved participants from all over the UK and crossed continental boundaries. And as 2020 draws to a close we’re only a handful of cases off our numbers for last year. Whether that’s because there are more disputes around or because remote mediation makes mediation more accessible it’s difficult to know – certainly its effectiveness has surprised many a cynic, including some of our own mediators!

Recognised as expert mediators

We’ve seen some changes this year. You may have noticed that we’re no longer called In Place of Strife but have rebranded to IPOS Mediation. And we now include the tagline ‘Negotiation. Facilitation. Mediation’ as this encapsulates all that we do for our clients. We want to break down the preconceptions that mediation is only something that takes place in the context of litigation and encourage advisors, or the lay person, to use our services wherever conversations become difficult or relations strained.

We said goodbye to a couple of our mediators and welcomed two more – Arabella Murphy, who has a particular interest in disputes relating to trusts, wills, family businesses and family relationships, and Rebecca Attree, who has a broad commercial practice as well as being a qualified workplace mediator.

And we’re rather pleased that in such a difficult year we’ve continued to be acknowledged for our expertise by the legal directories. Chambers & Partners recognised 19 of our mediators in the latest edition of their mediation rankings. And Legal 500 2021 listed 25 of our mediators – including Alistair Pye, one of seven IPOS mediators now in Tier 1 of the rankings.

Looking ahead to 2021

As we look ahead to 2021 I see many a development on the horizon. With the fallout from the pandemic and the economic crisis only just being felt, there’s no doubt that next year will be a busy one for those in the disputes sector – and we look forward to playing our part in assisting parties who are in dispute.

The new Master of the Rolls, The Rt. Hon. Sir Geoffrey Vos, takes up his post in January and has already expressed an ambition to totally rethink civil justice and how it operates. We wait to see what that might mean for ADR. Last of all, I hope that when we’re eventually able to celebrate our 25 years we can gather our loyal clients around us for one big party.

Until then, we wish you a Happy Christmas and a peaceful and prosperous New Year.