A Venue Can Set The Tone

Here's a good piece just posted at mediate.com by Paula Young of Appalachian School of Law in Virginia about how influential the venue is on what happens at mediation - something that has long been ignored and worthy of some research.

Yesterday I was at one of my favourite olde world venues, The Northern Club in Auckland, New Zealand.

Because it's like a time capsule full of creaky stairs and military books behind glass, the mediations tend to be more formal than, say, if we were in a modern law office and I pick the mediations we have there carefully.

These were our rooms yesterday;