Oliver Hallam

Client Feedback

“Oliver ‘has endless patience, even in the most trying situations. He listens carefully, and can be trusted only to reveal what the clients want to say”– Legal 500 2024

“Oliver shows commercial awareness in understanding our stance on offers in addition to showing emotional intelligence, and he can put clients at ease.” – Chambers & Partners 2024

Languages

English, Conversational: French & Spanish

Overview

Oliver has successfully mediated a wide range of private wealth, sport and family business disputes. He is a full time CEDR internationally accredited and CMC registered mediator. He trained as a solicitor at Allen and Overy LLP, London before joining Wrigleys Solicitors LLP, Leeds for ten years where he was a partner in the private client team.

With his background in private client law, he helps parties with their most sensitive, personal and private affairs within the complex framework of contentious trust and probate, tax, company, partnership, property, charity, Court of Protection, elder and sport law. Oliver maintains that no matter how complicated and entrenched the problem, it is nearly always possible for participants to achieve a mediated solution.

Personal Style

Oliver is an expert at helping families and sports people that are embroiled in highly emotional disputes and who wish to resolve their disputes privately without media attention. He helps UK and international families in single day mediations and also in longer term succession projects where a family is going through a time of change.

He is a first-rate communicator and is quick to build trust. He uses a psychotherapeutic approach to mediation to help parties find workable solutions to a wide range of issues. Oliver is used to multi-party disputes and where there are more than four parties, he advocates co-mediation.

Oliver is a practitioner of non-evaluative mediation. With the help of the mediator, the process gives the parties the opportunity to find their own solution. It is not the mediator’s role to express opinions on the relevant law or on the merits of particular positions. Oliver is an expert in reality-testing and challenging the parties’ positions, to give the parties the best chance of negotiating a mutually acceptable solution.

Oliver tailors the format of each mediation to suit the parties’ circumstances. The mediation can be held online or face to face or using a blend of both formats, with some parties attending online from overseas or from the emotional safety of their own home.

Expertise