Senior Advocate and Leading Mediator Mr. Sriram Panchu Delivers Talk at NLSIU
May 6, 2024
We were delighted to host Senior Advocate and expert mediator Mr. Sriram Panchu at the NLS campus on May 2, 2024, where he delivered a guest lecture on the topic “Mediation in India – Development, Legislation and Prospects”.
Mr. Panchu has been at the forefront of the Indian mediation movement and played an instrumental role in setting up India’s first court-annexed mediation centre at the Madras High Court. Mr. Panchu has been appointed as a mediator in several prominent commercial and public disputes. Mr. Panchu’s practice also extends to corporate law, commercial matters, and family disputes, among other areas. Mr. Panchu has also published in India as well as abroad, and has several books to his credit.
He addressed the third year students from the 5-Year B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) programme, currently studying the Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) core course. During his lecture, Mr. Panchu, spoke about the developments in the field of mediation and its prospects, and he also covered legislation, alongside sharing some of his personal experiences as a mediator in the field. He later interacted with students and staff, on mediation as well his other areas of practice, after the lecture.
On his visits to NLS: “I liked the classroom session with the NLS students. I thought their level of interest was good, and the questions were excellent! I recall visiting the campus during NLSIU’s 25th anniversary celebrations and had met with NLS Founder-Director Dr. Madhav Menon at that time. I have visited the University a couple of times since then including seminars and so on.
I am currently in the process of developing lectures on specific themes (such as ‘the great judges of all times, the great cases, and the great legal doctrines’), and would be happy to engage with NLSIU in the future on this series. This lecture series will also be made available on my website (linked below).”
Advice for students who want to pursue interests in mediation: “Students who are interested in pursuing a career in mediation should continue to engage with it. They should do a training programme that doesn’t take too much time. They should continue to read, there is a lot of good reading material, and when they have the opportunity they should intern with somebody who does mediation work, so that they can gauge their own interest and see how much they like it. I have also been telling youngsters who came to see me that whatever field of law you may want to do, you may do that, but you can also practice Mediation. If you have a yen for mediation, you can of course mediate whenever you have the time. There is that flexibility. If you decide you want to focus more on mediation, you can do that too. But keep in touch with it because it is growing. It is at a take off stage. Things have to be done for it to really move. Once it moves, it will be a different ball game. So just continue your engagement with it.
On the topic of mediation itself, there are a lot of things (conversations, articles) out in the media, social media etc. You will have to be careful, but you must learn to identify sources that you can trust. So when you are watching something, you must ask the question ‘Is this a reliable source?’. The automatic reaction is to open it and read it and think it’s genuine. I think today, we have to ask ourselves the question, “Is this a reliable source?’’.
In order to follow more of his work, students can follow his website www.srirampanchu.com.
