The Working Group II (Dispute Resolution) of the U.N. Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) met in February to complete its work on the drafts of the instruments. That should be exciting to dispute resolution professionals because the end result may be significant growth of international commercial mediation.

In the Spring 2018 issue of The Professional, the newsletter of the Henry Latimer Center for Professionalism, mediator/arbitrator Lawrence Kolin describes some challenges to arbitration's status as "an efficient process with finality" and the ways that professionalism could remedy the perceived ills of the process.

April Y. Walker, a respected Central Florida litigator, has become the newest member of Upchurch Watson White & Max Mediation Group's panel of neutrals. Ms. Walker has statewide ties as a native of Miami and a graduate of the University of Florida Levin College of Law in Gainesville. Additionally, she began her litigation career at Carlton, Fields, Ward, Emmanuel, Smith & Cutler (now Carlton Fields Jorden Burt) in Tampa in 1997. She left the practice to clerk for U.S. District Judge Stephan P. Mickle in the Northern District of Florida but returned to the firm's Orlando office in 2008. She was an associate litigation attorney until she was elected a shareholder in 2015.