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 IN A brief ceremony after the ADR Group's annual conference and dinner at the Bodleian Library in December, three leading players in the ADR community were presented with awards. Quentin Smith, a former Addleshaw Goddard litigator-turned mediator, was named Mediator of the Year; Halliwells was named law firm of the year; and Philip Bartle QC of Littleton Chambers won an award for 'international mediation development.'
Smith, an increasingly visible player in the market, left the Addleshaw Goddard partnership in May 2007 to remain with the firm on a consultancy basis while pursuing a career as a fulltime mediator. Having sustained a near-perfect settlement rate in over 300 mediations, Smith attributes his success to a flexible approach: 'I think mediation does need to be recognised as a profession and it's appropriate to have discussion about professional standards, but at the heart of it, mediators need to engage with parties and representatives. Perhaps what the ADR Group has observed is that I try to help people along without becoming a distracting feature of the mediation.'
 Philip Bartle QC was a key figure in an innovative scheme to train a group of lawyers from all over India last summer. The course held in Chennai (formerly Madras) was the first to attract a nationwide following, and enjoyed significant support from the local press and judiciary including the Chief Justice of Madras. 'There is a desperate need for mediation in India,' Bartle said, 'the system is chaotic, old fashioned and out of control.' Commenting on the award, Bartle said, 'I think mediation is more international than anything yet devised and if I've played a part in creasing that, I'm delighted. To receive an award for doing so is icing on the cake'
David Rawlinson, partner and head of ADR at Halliwells, received the award for Law Firm of the Year. 'We are very pleased,' Rawlinson said. 'We have worked closely with the ADR Group and consider ourselves quite pro-active in looking for cases to mediate.' Over the last 12 months, Rawlinson estimates the firm has initiated between 40 and 50 mediations.
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