We excel at finding solutions.
Who are we?
The Queen Mary Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) Society is a young society, entering its third year of activity. In such a short period of time, we managed to become the third-largest law-related society at Queen Mary, University of London, with around 100 active members. In recognition of our achievements and innovative approach, our society was awarded in 2019 the prize of ‘Best New Society’. We accomplished this with the aim of offering students the unique opportunity to develop key lawyering skills, and gain greater exposure to and education about alternative means of dispute resolution, with a particular focus on arbitration.
Our membership base is comprised of undergraduate and postgraduate students, with 43% studying LLM programmes at Queen Mary’s world-renowned Centre for Commercial Law Studies. In only two years of activity, we organised a wide variety of events with representatives from firms such as White & Case, DLA Piper, Debevoise & Plimpton, WilmerHale, and worked closely with the directors and student representatives of Queen Mary’s LLM programmes, as well as with world-renowned professors.
This year the society is planning on hosting various events including but not limited to: an introduction presentation on the different ADR branches, a discussion on professional realisation in the field of ADR, various networking receptions and the most invaluable opportunity we will provide is the Queen Mary Annual Commercial Negotiations Competition, co-organised in 2020/21 with the European Law Students’ Association (ELSA) and the Law and Business Society (LaBS).
2020/21 Vision
Diversity
With negotiations an already established and recognised branch of our society, we aim to improve our activity by offering non-commercial negotiations opportunities and an increased number of collaborations with other law societies and London universities. This shall come alongside opportunities focused on other ADR branches such as arbitration, mediation and conciliation. Apart from traditional panel/academic discussions, we will incorporate this knowledge sharing and skills practice via case studies, competitions, workshops, podcast series, and newsletters
Innovation
We reinnovate ourselves by embracing change and constructive feedback, encouraging flexibility, and adopting innovative solutions for newly-occurring issues. With the quick switch to the digital environment, our Team Leaders’ involvement in other organisations and companies enables us to draw experience from other projects in order to select the best digital platforms, improve our marketing reach initiatives, think strategically and increase members’ engagement. Additionally, due to the pandemic, we believe that innovation is needed more than ever. Our goal for the upcoming year is to translate this view into a hybrid selection of face-to-face and online events.
Practicality
Our opportunities are anchored in the real world. We aim to educate students in the field of ADR, and increase their employability prospects by providing practical, competitive and challenging opportunities which facilitate their skills’ development, help them expand their professional network, and allow them to apply theoretical knowledge to realistic commercial and non-commercial scenarios. We do that through a variety of events going from informative lectures to competitions and case studies.
