Elizabeth Birch gave up practice as an advocate in 2003 in favour of practising solely as mediator and arbitrator. The majority of her work over the past 27 years has been in the commercial and international fields. She was called to the Bar in 1978 and has specialised in all types of commercial and international disputes. She was one of the first at the commercial bar to become a mediator in 1995 and attended the Advanced Mediator Training in 2005. She has acted as mediator in substantial numbers of commercial disputes including high value, technical and multi-party disputes. She also sits as arbitrator in commercial disputes within her areas of expertise. Her mediations have included the following areas of dispute:
- Banking and financial services
- Commodities
- Conflict of laws and jurisdictional disputes
- Insurance and reinsurance
- International distributorship and franchise
- International trade, transportation and sale of goods
- Conflict of laws and jurisdiction disputes
- IT (information technology) and telecommunications
- Joint ventures
- Maritime and Shipping
- Oil, gas and energy
- Professional negligence
- Property disputes
- Insolvency
- Partnership and shareholder disputes
- Contractual disputes of all types
She is a CEDR and BAE accredited mediator, Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, Fellow of the International Academy of Mediators, panel member ICC, LCIA, CPR (New York) (panel for distinguished international arbitrators and mediators), IDRC/AAA (Oil & Gas Panel). Founding director of ACI, Arbitration for Commerce and Industry, now working in association with In Place of Strife.
Mediation Style: Elizabeth conducts mediations in a style of friendly informed discussion both between the parties and herself and also encourages open discussion between the parties themselves. She encourages the parties, individually, to make an early accurate assessment of their risks in the litigation and then tries to help them to come together to find the innovative and more interesting commercial solutions that are often available in mediation. She can be tough when required and her style may be described as a mixture of facilitative and evaluative, as the situation requires.
