Summary: CPR European Advisory Board Meeting
The CPR European Advisory Board--the CPR EAB--discussed ideas to help to make mediation and conflict resolution techniques more successful in a July 3 online meeting.
The EAB is co-chaired by Vanessa Alarcon Duvanel, counsel in King & Spalding’s Geneva, Switzerland, office, and Torsten Bartsch who works as associate general counsel for industrial machinery giant Caterpillar Sarl. The EAB provides strategic direction to CPR’s activities in the region and works on a number of initiatives of interest to European corporations and law firms. EAB members serve three-year terms on the board by invitation, developing events for the public in addition to holding quarterly meetings where they exchange perspectives and benefit from one another’s respective experiences in law firms and as in-house counsel.
The meeting began with the CPR’s Director of International Initiatives, Knar Nahikian, updating the EAB members on CPR events, including the Nov. 1 Africa Arbitration Day-New York conference and the February 5-7, 2025, CPR Annual Meeting in Miami, and updating members about the EAB’s recently published Corporate Early Case Assessment Toolkit for European Parties, which is now available to the public as a free digital download on the CPR website.
Torsten Bartsch led the meeting by presenting his “Seven Guiding Principles of In-House Conflict Management.” These included ideas such as depersonalizing conflicts to prevent personal feelings from making the conflict harder to resolve. He also advocated for finding ways to relate to the representatives because creating connections may help both sides to work better with in-house counsel and each other.
People’s cultures also may affect how counsel can create connections and begin to trust different parties. Therefore, it is important to be knowledgeable about different parties’ backgrounds and cultures.
These principles ensure that representatives are handling the conflict resolution process in a positive and efficient manner that creates mutually beneficial and effective solutions. Bartsch also reminded the EAB members that it is easy to assume that new situations are similar to ones they have previously handled, so they must listen carefully about each situation so they do not miss key differences between that case and previous ones.
Throughout the presentation, members discussed the different principles and offered their own insights into how they have used or may use these principles in future conflict resolution.
The next CPR European Advisory Board meeting is scheduled for October in Madrid.
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The author, a law student at the Northeastern University School of Law in Boston, is a CPR 2024 Summer Intern.
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