Chris Makin

Chris has mediated successfully across diverse commercial and civil disputes, including:

• Partnership
• Professional negligence
• Business and share valuations
• Director
• Contract
• Construction
• Boundary, rights of way and encroachment
• Civil fraud
• Insolvency
• Architect disputes
• Housing disrepair
• Defamation
• Intellectual property
• Expensive motor cars
• Probate, Inheritance Act and TOLATA

• Versatile, experienced mediator – Chris has undertaken further training in advanced mediation techniques and time-limited mediations. He also lectures to legal and other professionals on mediation. Chris mediates disputes across a wide range of issues, focusing on the people rather than the industries – with excellent results.
• Excellent commercial understanding – As a practitioner accountant Chris built four practices, including three from scratch. He built the largest sole practice in Leeds with 18 members of staff, and later became a partner in an international firm. His management experience and wide-ranging client list – from market traders to PLCs – have seen him work successfully with people at all levels of business and from diverse sectors.
• Highly empathic communicator – Chris listens closely and talks to people from all walks of life on their terms, able to quickly identify what is important to them in order to move seemingly entrenched positions towards settlement. One case saw Chris settle in one day a legacy dispute that had raged for 23 years, while others brought resolution where warring parties had even refused to sit in the same room at the start of the mediation process. 
• National coverage – Based in Yorkshire and in London (Gray’s Inn), Chris works across the UK, including within Scotland’s independent legal framework.

Chris says,

“I am a good listener and can empathise with all sorts of people; I have successfully worked with individuals from market traders to a prominent businessman knighted for services to industry. It’s all about finding out what life experiences and values they have.

“In mediation, I prepare very carefully. I listen, I empathise. I find the true needs of the parties. And by remembering to talk in terms of their language, in terms of what is important to them, I find out how their dispute may be settled.”

• Time-Limited Mediations training
• Advanced Mediation Techniques training
• Chartered Institute of Arbitrators – member (2006)
• Academy of Experts – Investigations Committee member, Fellow (1994)
• Chartered Institute of Management – Fellow (1984)
• Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) – Fellow (1979), associate (1968)
• Accredited Mediator (QDR) - Academy of Experts 1998
• Accredited Expert Determiner (QDR) - Academy of Experts 1998