Warm tributes have been paid to the nationally recognised mediator, Dr Karl Mackie CBE, who has died, aged 79.
Mackie, the founder and former CEO of the Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution (CEDR), was a prominent leader in commercial mediation and a strong advocate for expanding the use of alternative dispute resolution globally and in the UK. His belief in the power of mediation to resolve disputes never waned over four decades of advocating for ADR.
Mackie co-founded CEDR with Eileen Carroll KC (Hon), his second wife. They established mediation professionally, contributed to civil justice reform, and promoted its use locally and internationally.
As Gregory Hunt, of Hunt ADR, noted, having worked with Mackie when CEDR was established in 1990, commercial mediation in the UK was in its infancy. “There was no mature market waiting to be served; their vision built one from scratch,” Hunt added.
Mackie, said Hunt, had “helped establish mediation as a rigorous professional discipline, trained generations of practitioners, and persuaded a sceptical legal establishment that disputes did not always need to end in war-like litigation”.
Hunt said Mackie knew that effective mediation required strong institutional backing to uphold training, ethics, and credibility, thereby turning ADR into a recognised discipline. As John Munton of CEDR explained, Mackie and Carroll “were there at the very beginning".
“Karl led the organisation for many years as it grew from two members of staff working out of a borrowed room at Eileen’s law firm to an internationally recognised voice for mediation,” he added.
CEDR noted it had trained more than 10,000 mediators worldwide and established international partnerships across Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.
Munton added: “His vision, courage and determination transformed mediation from an unfamiliar concept into a mainstream means of resolving conflict that has benefited countless individuals, organisations and communities around the world.”
Writing on LinkedIn, the Canadian mediator, Wolf von Kumberg, said: “It was Karl who, when I was an in-house counsel, first helped me truly understand the value and potential of mediation.”
Von Kumberg added: “He did so much to develop its practice and techniques and worked tirelessly to ensure that its message and its profoundly human approach to resolving conflict were understood and embraced.”
Henrietta Jackson-Stops, former chair of London International Disputes Week, said both Mackie and Carroll had “shaped the future of the commercial mediation profession in the UK - showing others that mediation could, and should, be a standalone profession”.
She added: “I personally knew Karl for 25 years and benefited from his kindness, wisdom and support on numerous occasions. My heartfelt condolences to Eileen and his family; he will be much missed by the mediation community.”
Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer partner Alexander Oddy added his own tribute: “Karl Mackie was a colossal figure and leader in the development of mediation in this country. The landscape of the English civil justice system in which mediation is now so firmly established owes a great debt to the pioneering work of Karl.”
The chair of the Civil Mediation Council, Kelly Stricklin-Coutinho of 39 Essex Chambers, also recognised Mackie’s contributions, calling him “a powerhouse”.
“So many of the steps that Karl took, together with Eileen, were enough individually to earn him accolades as a leader, but taken together, he leaves an indelible and genuinely extraordinary legacy," she said, adding: “He was a deeply intuitive mediator and read the psychology of every room he was in with pinpoint accuracy. That, combined with his quiet authority, meant that every mediation I saw him in, he created mediation magic in a way that perhaps even the parties didn't fully realise the artistry behind how they arrived at a resolution. It was like watching the most distilled experience of what mediation could be.”
Writing on LinkedIn, Carroll thanked well-wishers for their tributes and added her own. “Karl was totally unique in the best possible way," she said. "Funny. Caring. Wise. Smart. A brilliant communicator, and relentless in his pursuit of goals, but always gave those around him their chance to shine. He sometimes worried about his ‘light touch’. I told him it was his ‘magic’. He had a way of converting all troubled waters into something so much better. All your words have brought great comfort, tears and joy to me and the whole family. We are so very proud of him.”
Mackie is survived by Carroll, a son and daughter, Alan and Karen, from his first marriage, and a stepdaughter, Jennifer, as well as his grandchildren.
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