Law students win Business Mediation Competition 2016

On November 10th and 11th, the Business Mediation Competition 2016 was held in Amsterdam, where student teams from different Dutch universities competed in negotiation sessions in commercial mediation. The event is organized by the Amsterdam International Chamber of Commerce and sessions are led by a professional mediator and judged by experienced legal experts. The University of Groningen, for the first time, won this years competition.

The two student teams from Groningen included students Annieck van Eck, David Altunian, Alexandra Seele, Michelle Houwing, and Mark van der Meijs, and coaches Patrick Koerts and Jeannette Smit. After three rounds, one of the Groningen teams had performed the best of all ten teams competing, and faced Nijmegen (the eventual runner-up) in the finals.  The final round, unlike the preliminaries, was conducted in English, and on the basis of a new case and with only an hour of preparation time, Michelle Houwing and Mark van der Meijs managed to secure a winning negotiation for Groningen.

Michelle and Mark will now move on to participate in the International Commercial Mediation Competition 2017, which will be held in Paris next February, and is organized by the Paris International Chamber of Commerce. They will compete against 66 teams from universities across the globe.

This article was published by the Faculty of Law.

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