Practice Overview
Accredited in 2008, Emma is an experienced mediator specialising in civil & commercial and workplace disputes. Her considerable experience as a lawyer representing parties at mediation has led to a deep understanding of the parties’ commercial interests and an ability to see all sides of the dispute. This, combined with careful preparation, allows for swift and effective progress to be made on the mediation day.
Emma’s international experience means she is adept at dealing with parties from a wide variety of backgrounds and business cultures. She is able quickly to get to the heart of a case, combining her legal abilities with her personal warmth and ability to build rapport with individual and corporate clients alike.
Emma is calm, creative and adaptable, using the mediation process flexibly to overcome any barriers to settlement and keep the parties on track. Facilitative and perceptive, she is nevertheless not afraid to ask difficult questions and challenge preconceptions. Her ability to build rapport and her excellent communication skills, combined with a tenacious and proactive approach, allow her to deal with high levels of conflict and entrenched positions, and to defuse difficult dynamics.
Clients have noted in particular her warm approach and ability to find a way forward, achieving settlement in cases where all parties had thought this would be impossible.
Professional Background
Prior to becoming a mediator, Emma worked as a commercial dispute resolution solicitor with Allen & Overy in London and with Herbert Smith in Hong Kong, on a broad range of commercial, financial services and employment disputes. She also taught commercial dispute resolution, mediation and mediation advocacy for a number of years at the University of Hong Kong, combining this with her mediation practice in Hong Kong. Emma has now relocated back to the United Kingdom, where she is spends the greater part of her time mediating commercial and workplace disputes, in addition to providing workplace conflict coaching and neutral evaluations
Endorsements
Emma Gooding is known for "ensuring the client feels heard and safe, while working to move the mediation forward and get both clients to focus on a positive outcome". Legal 500, 2022.
"Emma is a highly skilled mediator and provided an excellent service"
"Thanks very much for your help as mediator today - you were excellent !! I did not think this matter would settle but with your help we got there! You were very well prepared, on top of all the issues and communicated clearly and fairly with the parties. I will certainly recommend you to others."
"I wanted to say that I was very impressed with you as a mediator– you made an effort at the beginning to build a rapport with the client and to understand and empathise with their perspective. You took the time to go through the strengths and weaknesses of the client's position and examine the question of costs, and this made the negotiation which followed run more smoothly. I will definitely be putting your name forwards for future disputes and I have let my colleagues know that I was impressed."
“Emma is a highly competent and warm mediator. She did an excellent job of building a relationship with the parties, focusing them throughout and managing the whole process”
“She approached the mediation with energy and personal warmth, encouraging the parties to actively engage in the mediation”
“A sure-footed and accomplished mediator. Emma was highly effective at managing the parties and made huge progress at mediation, leading to an early settlement which at the outset had seemed unlikely”
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