Stephen is an active civil and commercial mediator. He mediates 40-50 mediations a year and has completed over 400 mediations.
The Directories describe him as:
“Brilliant at managing negotiations”, “Positive, creative and proactive”, “Who puts things succinctly”. Having “A robust and pragmatic style”, “Great depth of knowledge” and “Gravitas that clients like”
Clients praise his good humour and flexible accessible approach. He is always ready to discuss potential mediations without charge or obligation. Through setting up and running his own firm and his time as a Non- Executive Director of several companies he has a keen understanding of commercial issues.
As a solicitor Stephen specialised in insurance/reinsurance, insolvency-including fraud, employment in the financial sector including shareholder and partnership disputes and Art Law. He was Chairman of two Lloyd’s Managing Agencies and a Lloyd’s broker and sat on the Board of bio-tech, IT and start-up incubator companies.
Stephen mediates a wide range of disputes and is regularly appointed in disputes involving professional negligence, contested probate, insolvency, shareholders and partnerships, TOLATA, property, insurance and financial claims.
Stephen believes that purpose of mediation is make peace not war and that we get deals by discussing proposals not by arguing all day long.
Stephen has written 4 books (published by Wildy’s and Bloomsbury) on how to get the best out of the mediation process as an advocate/representative, client and mediator.
He also contributed a specialist chapter on mediating shareholder disputes and warranty claims in How to Master Commercial Mediation by David Richbell 2015.
He is the book editor for the SCMA Newsletter and reviews books for it and the Academy of Experts.
Stephen lectures on mediation at Kings College London M.Sc. in Construction Law. He is regularly invited to speak at Conferences and Workshops.
Over the past year he has spoken at the:
He frequently is asked to act as a judge at Mediation Competitions both in the UK and abroad including the ICC, INADR, IBA -VIAC CDRC and Oxford University.