John Brand

John Brand is a lawyer (BA LLB Wits) and retired attorney, consultant, and ADR specialist at Bowmans. He is also a retired director of Conflict Dynamics. Brand specialised in dispute resolution and the training of negotiators, mediators and arbitrators. He is a Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution (CEDR UK) accredited mediator and an International Mediation Institute (“IMI”) certified mediator. He served on the ADR Advisory Committee of the South African Law Reform Commission and is a member of the IMI’s Independent Standards Commission. Brand has written extensively in journals and other publications and co-authored “Commercial Mediation – a User’s Guide” and “Labour Dispute Resolution”, both published by Juta. Over the past 40 years, he has arbitrated and mediated many large commercial and employment disputes, and regularly facilitated negotiation, strategic planning, and transformation processes. Most recently this included the facilitation of the successful multi-year, multi-party, multi-issue Silicosis and Tuberculosis class action settlement negotiations. His work has included facilitation and training of parties to political conflict in the Basque Country and Northern Ireland. Brand was a member of the International Labour Organisation’s team of international experts appointed to design mediation training for developing countries and he regularly trained mediators from countries in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, and South America. The International Labour Organisation also commissioned Brand to design training material and to train parties and trainers from countries across the world in mutual gain negotiation. This training material has been translated into French, Portuguese and Arabic and is used extensively throughout the world. Brand serves on the Council and the Board of Directors of the IRR