This weekend we had the honour of representing the School of Law at the highly competitive UK Student Mediation Competition. This year’s competition being held in Queen’s University Belfast’s (QUB) Institute of Professional Legal Practice.
As a team, David Thomson, Alessia Cucchi, Daisy Lockhart, and Wyon Sandells, began our learning over the Christmas break with our coach, Patrick Achor, who has significant long-standing expertise in this field. This provided us with significant insights into mediation as an Alternative Dispute Resolution Method, and was followed by a detailed breakdown and analysis of how mediations are conducted, and how we should incorporate the knowledge we learnt in these sessions, during the competition, and further afield.
To help us further our knowledge and skills, we were engaged in intensive online and in-person training sessions, ranging between three and five, two-to-three hour long sessions every week. Patrick’s mentorship allowed us to learn the key techniques behind facilitating mediation sessions, creating an environment where everyone feels heard and understood, and how the powers can be empowered in a pragmatic way, allowing for both of them to walk away with an agreeable solution.
Paired with the clear and concise feedback we received, the skills we developed were vital for the competition hosted in Belfast where we were marked by a panel of expert judges, including legal professionals and CEDR-accredited members.
The competition itself was split into three rounds, each having a fictional scenario with background information, whereby students from different universities would role-play as the parties, whilst the competitors for that round were the mediators. We were marked on numerous points including the ability to encourage co-operation between the parties, manage time efficiently, guide the parties towards a win-win resolution, uphold the foundational aspects of mediation (e.g. confidentiality, impartiality, and ‘without prejudice’). Each round had two team-members co-mediating, while the others role-played separately for competing teams.
After the third round had finished, the judges were provided with time to review the competing teams' marks and was followed by a formal dinner which provided us with the ability to talk to and connect with our peers, and expert judges, learning and working across the UK.
Looking back, we believe that this competition provided us with the ability to learn and hone numerous essential transferable skills, including team-working, unbiased communication, the ability to identify and build upon the parties’ common grounds, and manage conflict.
We are extremely grateful to the School of Law for being able to represent the University of Aberdeen on a nation-wide level, and thankful to our scoach Patrick for the guidance which allowed us to learn and widen our knowledge of mediation and ADR’s application more generally. We are looking forward to applying and continuing to develop our knowledge in this field during our journeys as legal professionals.
