This is the title of my new post series — building on last year’s #20YearsInPractice reflections and the many conversations they sparked.

In this series, I will explore the values and skills that matter most to me in dispute resolution — as a lawyer, arbitrator, mediator, and conciliator.

And again, there is a connection to my past: when I shared the idea with colleagues, they encouraged me to illustrate the posts with my own drawings. Few people know this, but ever since I was a child, I have filled notebooks with sketches of all kinds.

So, over the coming months, I will be sharing some of those drawings to illustrate the values and skills that have carried me through my 20+ years of practice in the world of dispute resolution.

Creativity. Empathy. Language. Listening. Trust. Curiosity. Quality — and more.

Many of the drawings feature Santa Claus in one way or another. Not because I was sketching my future self, but because the Christmas Season was always the time where I would sit down and draw a few personal Christmas motives.

And somehow, magically, they all fit into my dispute resolution picture.

Each post will include one drawing, a brief look at what inspired it at the time, and how it connects—sometimes unexpectedly—to lessons from over 20 years in practice. Perhaps some of them will resonate with your own experience.

The one below I most likely drew before Christmas 1990. I was 15 then, and I guess was dealing with a lot of change and possibly a bit of rebellion. The German text under the drawing translates into:

“𝓖𝓸𝓽𝓽𝓪 𝓰𝓸 𝔀𝓲𝓽𝓱 𝓽𝓲𝓶𝓮𝓼, 𝓸𝓵𝓭 𝓶𝓪𝓷!”

Thank you Julian Bickmann and Petrit Elshani for giving me the idea to use my own drawings, and for encouraging me to actually go through with it!

#DrawingFromThePast #Conflict #Litigation #Arbitration #Mediation #Conciliation #ADR