Mediation

Blackstone Chambers has a great depth of expertise in this important and expanding arena, running alongside litigation, in the UK and worldwide.

Our mediators have all been brought up, and most still practise, as litigators, so they have the advantage of all that accumulated insight and experience. Lord Burnett (former Lord Chief Justice) brings judicial insight, Mark Shaw KC, Kate Gallafent KC, Jane Mulcahy KC and Gemma White KC are all senior barristers whose mediation and litigation practices span all the Blackstone specialisms from complex commercial, employment, financial services and professional negligence cases to sport, media and public/regulatory disputes.

Lord Burnett of Maldon is a CEDR accredited mediator. From 2017 to 2023 he served as Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, Head of the Judiciary and President of all the Courts in England and Wales. He presided over appeals in both divisions of the Court of Appeal and sat in the Supreme Court. As a High Court Judge from 2008 he sat in the Queen’s Bench Division dealing with civil, criminal and public law cases, and in the Court of Appeal from 2014 sat on appeals across the full range of cases. He continues to sit in the Supreme Court as a member of the supplementary panel and is Chief Justice of the Astana International Financial Court. At the Bar, Lord Burnett had early experience of mediation and a broad common law practice dealing with tort and contract cases with a later focus on public and administrative law and public inquiries. He was instructed in some of the most complex and high-profile cases of the day.

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In 2008 Mark became an accredited mediator, through CEDR. Increasingly, he deals with the more complex and weighty mediations, which demand advanced mediation skills and sometimes last for more than one day or even cover multiple parties, issues and sessions over weeks or months.

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Kate is a qualified CEDR mediator and has acted as sole mediator in disputes involving a wide range of issues in the Employment, Sport, Public and Commercial sphere, such as the leaking of confidential information from a sporting organisation, re-integration of an individual into the work force following mental health issues, assault by a solicitor of a law firm on a partner, safeguarding issues at a University, restructuring at a major art gallery, immigration decisions of the Secretary of State and police conduct in respect of disclosure for the purpose of criminal records checks.

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Jane is CEDR accredited and has mediated a range of employment, sport, commercial, education, music, media, shareholder and partnership disputes. In facilitating settlement, she draws on her long experience of acting for both sides in litigation and understands the particularly stressful and delicate nature of mediations, particularly when relationships are ongoing, as well as the need to come up with creative solutions. She is a member of Sport Resolutions’ mediation panel.

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Gemma is an experienced and CEDR accredited mediator. She is a leading silk with a broad-based practice, encompassing public law, professional discipline, discrimination, education, sport and tax. Her clients include government departments, regulators, local authorities, sporting bodies, universities and schools, individuals and action groups. Gemma has considerable experience of chairing/sitting on disciplinary/grievance and safeguarding panels, particularly in the education and sporting sectors.

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