The aim of this seminar is to outline some of the trends and challenges in family mediation in England with a view to exploring how this might be relevant to mediation practice in Hong Kong. Key trends in family mediation today in England are greater regulation, greater public funding, increasing multidisciplinarity, and the potential for increasing levels of mandatory participation by potential litigants in family mediation. The challenges facing family mediation in the UK include clients’ inability to access legal advice, greater diversification of family structures and increased levels of conflict. This seminar will also try to unpack just what it is that causes that ‘magic’ to happen in the mediation room that allows previously warring clients to come to a resolution that they can both live with and how we can all adopt some of that ‘magic’ in our own lives.

About the Speaker:

Prof. Anne Scully-Johnson, Adjunct Associate Professor, CUHK LAW

Anne Scully-Johnson has taught law at universities in London, Hong Kong and Denmark for almost 30 years. She is currently an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She has been an accredited mediator in the UK since 2009 and in Hong Kong since 2012. She became an accredited specialist family mediator in Hong Kong in 2017 and has been an accredited Family mediator in the UK since 2022, where she now works full-time as a mediator with a boutique family law practice: Family Solutions.

Anne has published a number of books, articles in national and international law journals and led several research projects in Family Law and Public Law and has served, and continues to serve in her specialist fields, on the committees of various bodies in the UK, Hong Kong and internationally.

All CUHK LAW alumni and students are welcome.