“Mediation is the homeopathy of dispute resolution,” one City partner recently suggested to The Diary, accidentally explaining why it is that mediation almost never actually works.

Fortunately, dispute resolution is not all smiles and sunshine just yet. Indeed, one top 20 head of litigation pithily summed up the antipathy between some rival disputes practices with his succinct analysis of one national giant’s contentious group – just days after going 12 rounds toe-to-toe with them in a recent heavyweight clash.