[Music] problem in this regard is that I see a lot of I a lot of challenges when it comes to my name is Ahmed Elnaggar and this is Monday Legal welcome back with Aseel Zimmo and Monday legal thank you how was the coffee very good can I ask you a question what's your coffee generally how do you start your today a very very big mug of black strong hot coffee and now I only have one I used to be at Coffee Junction I used to drink coffee all the time now um you know we are all health conscious we're no longer exactly but you know it's like a matter of having a limitation to your vices it's important and you want to enjoy everything in life a bit of sugar a bit of fun a little bit coffee a little bit of gluten you know all the fun things in life so if you do a little bit of every bit then you're okay so to limit like balance out I like I like I try to have one cup of coffee a day love of my life is actually the khi coffee oh yeah um I like it I like it because it's got saffron and cardamon and lots of really kind of interesting flavors and I remember the first time and the free flow of it as well is really cool yeah yeah really really and then you know and it's always hot yes and um you know you have to learn to shake the cup you know the point about culture is really interesting um I used to um when I first moved to to bahin I worked for the American Body Association and we had a lot of experts come so they would drink a lot of coffee and they never knew this shaking thing but that's not the the funny part the funny part I was trying to convince this expert this is actually coffee cuz he as an American knows coffee to be black yeah and only black yes and it is not it's yellow or like beige so he's like I see it's not coffee I'm like I promise you it's coffee and it's got more caffeine than the black virgin I promise you it is so we googled it so he proves I Pro to him like oh my God this is really true but the point about culture and respect of culture and I think in mediation you know that's something is really really really important that people really appreciate we're talking about that in the break people appreciate people that respect their cultures their history the background where they come from understand them they respect it even more if somebody's standing in the middle trying to resolve a conflict and I think it's really really important and to understand your parties but most importantly to understand when you're not the right person for the job um I had a I had one experience where um I walked into um a mediation after about half an hour I could tell there was no chist between me and those parties it was not going to work there is something and all the skills and the art and all that but part of the skills and art and experience is you'll be able to recognize I'm not the right person to resolve this dispute so I said to the parties listen I know this is going to sound very strange I really don't think I'm the right person for this I know exactly who is there let me let me call them and see if they're available and you know not waste time we we'll see if they can they can come and join us and the parties both looked at me and went what I care settling this more important than and me doing this and they were like that's very strange I think it's the passion of it all anyway long story short we did bring the right a different person and lucky enough they were available and they came and they resolved it so it worked actually your choice of the right personality because you read parties were not they were just not working react to you no they just I just couldn't bring out the best in them um it's like having the right teacher it's having like coach um I just somehow we could not speak the right language for many many many different reasons usually I can adapt quite well to people's background and people's personalities I do a lot of reading I really care about you know body language psychology I really really believe we are who we are from childhood you know who your parents are and how you grow up is who you are as much as you try to be the other person you're not and um I always say that comes really clear you know one when you have children you are your mother or your father when you raise your children it's amazing yes all of those things you said I'm not going to be that person you are you are you just are you can be the better version you can be the Plus+ but you are you know it you are the same version like simple things I I I you know laugh about um you know we never had sleepovers yeah in my w and I grew up in London all my life it's just not happening same for me right my kid ain't gonna sleep over nobody's House end of conversation it's a red line now that okay but when we were kids and you said you were not allowed to do sleep over it we were very upset Dy mama when it's my turn I'm going to let my kids sleep over now that I have my own child absolutely not not going to happen so it's funny you are you are where you come from you are that person absolutely we do change and develop and adapt to our life experiences and our life experiences often and I know your life experience and my life experience different to our parents of course yeah and everybody's life experience is different to their parents life generation you know us growing up now look at our kids what they're going to be facing AI metaverse all of those technology in development I have a 5-year-old his life in 20 years is very different than my current life let alone my life 20 20 years ago so I think there is a lot to that and I think it's really important that when you do mediation you understand this um it's really important you know with the rise of tech and young people starting this bang that you really can understand what that drives them what actually makes them want to do this I I always say something um I started recently working with entrepreneurs because it's like it's an area that's got some much passion people that really believe and start them you know when people set up businesses this is my belief in the olden days they were not thinking about being the Google or the Microsoft or the Facebook of the world they were thinking how do we make a living right how do we feed ourselves our children you know if all World goes well and you know it grows that's fantastic and then it grows well and it's fantastic and then you want to preserve it for the next gener that's not what the these startups want no they want start them they want to be the next big thing that's what they care about the one the one and they are prepared to recycle ideas in a way in a generation difference having Gods like we emotionally attached to our idea we have we are not easy to just do this throw it and start again yeah so the idea that you need to be able when you come to resolve those kind of conflicts is understand that thead the generation those are the kind of people sitting in that room your point of reference are completely not relevant to those people and you need to develop and adapt and learn and I have a grandmother who is probably one of the only people I know in my life and she's masah 90 years old she's one of those people in a way that I think is impossible like for me you I look at her I like you're such a modern person you are the person of 2024 and she recognizes of course you're not going to understand any but she recognized there is a wall of out there that developed and changed and it's very different to the world that she lived in that she understand that her grandkids and her great grandkids our points of reference are completely different to her points of reference and she knows how to deal with it and I think ability to adapt is such an amazing skill it's really really important in dispute resolution and very important in in in mediation um it's the same thing we always say and you had to say this on the panel you know mediation have existed in our cultures yeah and of course it did it's a different form completely more academically I don't know regulated or or a lot formal it's a lot more formal um I wrote a PhD about um the use of dispute resolution in tribal societies yeah and you know the chief of a tribe the Elder of the family was obviously the person you want to resolve all your problems by the way he didn't mediate he decided was right it was wrong people get that impression that it was mediation it wasn't mediation that wasn't mediation when you went to the Elder you went to the tribal the chief he was making decisions that's made decision that was a judge yeah it was a judge it was an arbitrator that's that the other one and I said to you about um the words so was actually has got bad connotation if think about it because was Ina or brokerage when it comes to exactly and then when you put it with with a real estate with financial with insurance than it is brokerage yeah neither of those is what we're talking about today yes and also this kind of inbuilt thing we as people have got this in need that we hear two people have had a fight let me try to fix it for you right so I I find I try to um bring bring them together that also is not what we're talking about here and I I it's my life mission my life mission to make people understand that that is not the was that we're talking about this is not the mediation we're talking about more importantly that this is an art and it is a science and just because you tried all the other options it doesn't mean you actually tried it the actual mediation I'm talking about it's really important that if you are going to give judge mediation you judge it by going through the right process going with the right mediator that can actually really resolve your your through disputes how has been trying to resolve your disputes now the big big big massive problem is if you go through mediation like anything in life with the wrong person yeah you're going to get the wrong results yeah and plus you put you off a life let me ask you this because um and um like I heard you talking about percentages of success rate of how the mediation work and so on these calculations like 80% 20% Which Market which area because I understand very well that in the in in in some markets you don't have even regulations for the mediation they don't have any centers for them others do and in Saudi in UAE we we're still starting with the mediation to be a formal thing we have the conciliation as a formal step before litigation absolutely so where does these statistics fall they are Global statistics for people that been working in mediation for a very long time um they are but I don't really believe to be honest I think we are very fertile ground as people in this region for mediation and I tell you why because we most of us are connected in family so International it's a very International expert market right but in the rest of the Arab world yeah you have common religion common families common yeah yeah there's many things and in reality is you actually build a relationship with the people you do business with whether you're whether you come together as partners or you are your supplier you don't build some sort of relationship you start knowing the person's family their brother their sister their wife their children how many times it's one of the biggest shock of my life when I first moved to the Arab world was you sit in a business meeting no business meeting would ever start without me asking you how your children are no business meeting would ever start without me asking you how your children are right I might not know your children but I will definitely ask never told them I don't know if you have a children but I will ask right have you ever signed a business meeting in London in New York Paris where somebody ask you how your children is absolutely not so there is an inbuilt personal connection we care about family we care about relationships fundamental mediation gives you is the maintenance of those relationships so why lose somebody that you've been doing business with for young two three four years when there is a solution so the percentage I think in the GCC and the Arab world in my opinion and any by the way societies are very much more built on those kind of relationship Asia for example is very wi the the west and we can say east and west but you know what I mean by the point because you know Italy is in the west and they are very family oriented it's not I'm not talking about us and them I'm saying the societies that are very much still rooted in family that that family connection is very important I think is very ripe ground for mediation it's a lot harder when it comes to individualism in a lot of countries individualism really important it's about me and not everybody else my interest not the interest of the collector those people you when talk to them you need to talk to them about mediation in a different way because we need to be self- serving so you say to them the things I said to you about you calculate your your your risk and nobody better than businessmen and women to be able to put them down these are the risk this how you mitigate them these are the pros Le are the cons you balance them out you take a risk take a risk on mediation tiny tiny risk but the actual gains are huge and you could really make it a huge difference those conversations between lawyers and their clients both external lawyers in-house lawyers are really really important Dr ail you know very well that it's not always about money there's a lot of ego involved and there's a lot of incidents that businessmen they don't really care what happened and about about the technicalities and and all of this and some cases are just so complex because it's either the ego or the the the the cultural um difficulty between two um I don't know two colleagues sometimes working in the same uh field but in two different companies two Engineers one of them want to be proving that he is smarter than the other and the the accountant want to show that he did I see a lot of room to fix it if you look at the technicalities or if you look at the money but the conflict still goes on because someone just feels like Angry do you have any examples of of situations those are my favorite by the way those are my favorite cases especially the people that recognize that the problem is not the money um the problem they recognize that the problem actually is a lot more deep rooted it's a lot more um but I think it's harder for your job then of course of course yeah but the great thing about that because you know when you're talking to your client you're saying by the way court is not going to satisfy you man ain't going to satisfy that's not right there let's go sit in a closed door and go punch each other's lights out and let's get a referee in the middle and maybe we can get an answer you know what I mean of course it's not easy but I've had situations always always is something to do with ego always there something to do with rivalry always something somebody feels disrespected by the other party always all the time told the story yesterday and I know that's what you're alluding to in the panel yes um it was it was it was one of my favorite favorite favorite um mediation because they were two big massive CEOs and been doing business together for a very long time and very successful business you know both companies are making a lot of money because of this great um experience and somehow for some Sange reason that nobody understood somehow there's a huge dispute and you know they're fighting the lawyers themselves did not understand why these guys are fighting the employees of the company didn't know why this I want to go to court I want him eternity in court elanes that's what I want and the other person said I am going to defend it all my might I'm gonna put all my resources behind this he is going to lose okay so somebody said well before you we all kind of go punch each other in the courts let's see if we can find a solution and they said impossible impossible anyway and that's another big big problem the person that says yes is a person that is feels Weak by accepting this because then the other person thinks M he wants to mediate because he doesn't have a good cave and it's really important Now's the Time to hit hard exactly that's the time to punch the hardest punch and it's really really important that you maneuver this yes intelligently anyway I was brought into the room been a long long time um uh and and and this is also um you know talking and you know and he says I don't owe him that money don't he's claiming from me this amount money it's wrong the other guy goes I supplied you with this stuff and this is what the invoice says no no I'm sorry this is wrong anyway long story short you just need to let us to BR well so you take them in the room you sit down and in women as well you know I'm saying is the only men right and you can go you sit there and you say can you believe he did one to three four and I'm like oh really and the person yes it's absolutely I can't believe it after all these years of business this is what he does and he I I just can't believe it and I said okay and it's not basically the business deal it's got nothing to do with nothing at all yeah and said does the other guy know that you is what upset you he of course he knows he did it how can he not know my friend what can I tell him and he's like L you cannot you cannot tell him cannot tell him he should know you know when you're like when you have a fight with your friend you should know I I'm upset yeah you should know right because you know me you're my friend and I said maybe we should just remind him yeah right take him back to that man but let's go do it together me and you so we went back to the room and I said oh you know I remember um I was you know so and so was telling me and know this happened blah blah blah and this happened and the other guy goes yeah yeah and he tells that from his point of view so this guy goes naturally no that's not what happened this is this is what happened I'm really really upset and the guy went what no no no no no absolutely not seems to be a big misunderstanding and as I told yesterday they're sitting on this big massive table the guy just got up went to the other side of the table kissed the guy on the head and said I'm really sorry I never understood that's how you felt and so the other guy in reaction looked at him and went oh and they walked and we all had a beautiful lovely lunch and I always tell that story because days discussing the techties where the goods went and when what day they received and and you know what they would have gone to court and the plans is out the guy would have had to pay it yeah I would have got a judgment they would spend a lot of money and a lot of time and a lot of dist action and the other guy was going to make his life a living hell to get b or enforcement execution he that played every trick in the book ensure that he gets his money as late and as possible why because he just want job yeah so instead they left they had lunch together and their business continued and it was like you just have to sense sometimes and you know this you've seen clients walk into your office and tell your story and you're going I have a feeling this is not Theory it's not a complete story there's something more to this right always what do you mean that's every story I and told people come to lie to me every day they don't lie they tell you the story from their point of view right and I always say to students um the truth is somewhere in the middle 100% Ahmed tells his story from his point of view from where he sees it from and ail tells it from her point of view where she sees it from neither of them are lying often a mind play tricks on us and this is why you know with this testimony has been proven in the in the world to be completely unreliable because we just remember however we want to remember things and actually what you need to remember and when I said as an arbitrator that's actually fundamental the truth is somewhere in the middle the issue with arbitration or Court as a judge the answer is what can be proven by evidence even though often you know that's not really necessarily the answer but you know this is the system and this is the procedure and that's why when you go to mediation you see real solutions you see out of the box solutions that actually maintains the relationship maintains people doing well and you know getting rid of this bad feeling and you know in a bigger philosophical moment don't we all should have a duty as lawyers as business people as human beings and anyway the end of the story is you're not holding that you know um I remember my dad used to always say when you're upset with someone and you hold it it's like holding call the only person that's burning is you you don't want that it's good for you to just release it give it away forgive and and get on with life and sometimes by the way it doesn't mean they're going to do business again together but the matter is resolved the matter is resolved then it's Case Closed you can go ahead with your life focus on the commercial side and yeah and much quicker and much cheaper and much better yeah um however I I think I want to say something really really important um that does doesn't mean every single dispute is fit for mediation and that doesn't mean that every single dispute can be resolved by mediation right sometimes you actually do need a judge an arbitrator to issue a decision because that's what's necessary and there are setups in the world that this is necessary public listed companies for example sometimes it's really hard for them to mediate right um because of the structure and the governance and you know it's not your money it's public money and all government agencies that's really hard there are there are circumstances is where that is it's not easy it's not the right solution you actually do know that you probably can resolve it actually you do need that piece of paper um it's really important for you to get judgment for you to get an award so I think you need to be minded of this there's no magic bullet any just to be clear you know sometimes when to sit me he say I'm like people really the solution to all problems nothing is the solution of all problems this nothing is in life what I think is important and this is what I always say to students lawyers um in house counsel when I when I when I talk to them what's important is you have the full Tool Box available to you to try the right tool for the right problem you know I'm not very good at DIY but I definitely know you can't use a hammer when you need a screw driver right if you need if you need to screw something down it's really useful to use a screwdriver hammering down it's just not necessary you know when it comes to an NA you need H you just need to have the tool the right tool to be able to for the right situation for the right situation and that's our duty as lawyers in my opinion um is to be able to say to clients listen these are your options let's just look at the options let's measure them out let's judge them let's weigh up the pros and cons for each of them and let's find the best solution that really suits you as a client you practice in so many different um countries and and with different cultures and so on I want you to maybe suggest a LW to be changed or something to to be introduced that probably might help mediation to be more effective and more used probably in the conflict resolution in the region um I think I want to I want to suggest two things one is is is one of the whenever I do this kind of stuff lawyers always say to me and nose diving right you know the fees that I've just quoted them are gone very true the reality is we need to have a change of culture to clients we need to clients need to understand a lawyer that she settles the dispute out of court she get an uplift and they do that yeah that's what inflation is right the value of money now is different than money than the money in one year yes and that cost is what the lawyer could charge so he's not only taking his fees he's also taking an uplift because I got you your money now so I think that's really important change of shift and I think we as lawyers need to educate our clients into this on the legal side I think um the Clause developing in the region I think though one of the things that we really need to make really sure about and it's so so easy to enforce an award so easy an arbitration award it's still not that easy to enforce an settlement agreement and even though I said you know 90% or whatever very high percentage of that voluntarily but still the question has to remain okay now we've gone through this process and we all signed a noted line and for whatever reason the other party bails doesn't do what it promised to do what do I do with that piece of paper the answer cannot be I start again in arbitration I start again in conflict in court that's not the answer answer is that document again conflict Court that's not the answer the answer is that document should have a very fast route for me to actually be able to get my money should have a very fast route for me to actually be able to get my money and I think we still haven't mastered that there were settlement agreements to be enforced by the courts in a very fast way so I think if there was one thing I think would make huge difference to the development of mediation um will be that because that actually really matters to the client because that's one of the most important questions La you know clients ask you okay great so we settled what do I do with that piece of paper I know I can do a judgment I know I can do with a with an arbitration Award right or what do I do with the settlement agreement that we both signed and so it's really really important that lawyers are very minded of that because I think that's where our duty comes then to protect your client that we've been through this process you convince them to sit with the mediator they've been through it now they put it all down on a paper to make sure that that paper is enforceable what do we know now dril Simo thank you very much it was exciting and amazing amazing and knowledgeable and educating uh session and I'm very happy to have you on Monday legal and thank you again for being with us today thank you very much for having me I really really enjoyed it well this is your do from Monday legal see you next week