It was about 0° and early in the morning when we set off towards Hanover. Barely two weeks prior to the ICC Mediation Competition 2017 in Paris, law students of Leibnitz University’s Law Faculty were about to host the so-called “Pre-Rounds”. That meant that teams from nearby Marburg, but also from cities as far away as Kyiv, were coming together to prove their mediation skills. This was something the Bucerius Mediation team (comprised of Änna Isfort, Katharina Tisch, Jakob Dürr and Jannis Graeve, along with coaches Claudia Kück and Monty Silley) could not miss.
Arguably, the most difficult task in these mediations is slipping into the role of your character: one time you act as a sports apparel company in dispute with an athlete who has allegedly taken drugs and next you represent a pharmaceutical company intending to invest in a space laboratory. But you also need to know (or at least pretend to know) how – for example – wine is produced or drug tests work and then put yourself in your counterpart’s position and understand their interests in the case.
We were very glad to see that we succeeded in doing so and came out as the winning team from this weekend! However, the most valuable things that we took from this competition was not a trophy or winner’s certificate, but the extensive feedback that we received and hopefully can put into practice in Paris. Many thanks to the ICC Team Hanover for organizing this great event!
