Mediation and negotiation competition in UILS, PU

Chandigarh, September 19, 2019: The University Institute of Legal Studies (UILS), Panjab University, Chandigarh, is organising the 3rd edition of its annual Intra Department Mediation and Negotiation Competition on 20th and 21st September, 2019.
Like every year, the event is being organised by the Alternate Dispute Resolution (ADR) and Client Counselling (CCL) Board of the Department, under the guidance of their faculty coordinator, Dr.Shruti Bedi, and Dr.Rattan Singh, Director, UILS.
In order to garner the interest of students and to bring to their notice the benefits of the upcoming field of mediation and arbitration, several demonstrations and training sessions were conducted by the Board. Here, the students were made to understand how the process of Alternate Dispute Resolution works through day-to-day examples. This piqued the curiosity of many, and led to an extremely overwhelming response for the upcoming competition.
The intra-department competition will take place over two days, during which the students will go head to head in five consecutive rounds. Over three hundred students grouped in teams of three each will compete to reach the coveted finals, being adjudged by the Honourable Justice G. S. Sandhwalia and Justice Mahesh Grover, Hon’ble Punjab and Haryana High Court.
The students in each team will play the roles of a Mediator, Client and Counsel, and will qualify for the subsequent rounds based on their collective marks and the rank attained by them thereof. Every round will be judged by professional mediators and eminent lawyers of the Punjab and Haryana High Court.
The winners will be awarded the titles of Best Team, Best Mediator, Best Negotiating Pair, and other individual awards, along with cash prizes and trophies. The competition will help bring the budding lawyers out of their comfort zones, and inculcate in them the skill to settle disputes peacefully, thereby reducing the ever increasing burden on the judicial machinery.