The International Academy of Mediators

Louise Otis
Quebec Court of Appeal
Edifice Ernest-Cormier
100 Notre-Dame Street East
Montreal, QB H2Y 4B6

Phone: 514-393-2017
Fax: 514-873-0376
Email: sito7852@yahoo.com

Louise Otis is an active mediator in commercial and in civil matters. Otis is also Deputy Judge for the Administrative Tribunal of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). During her career as a lawyer, Otis practiced and taught civil, labour and administrative law and specialized in the fields of mediation, arbitration and negotiation. In 1997, while a Judge at the Quebec Court of Appeal, she developed one of the world's first judicial mediation systems, and later helped establish mediation programs in Canada and abroad. She has mediated hundreds of cases in commercial and civil law. Otis created and dispensed intensive mediation training courses in different countries including France, Belgium, Russia, Brazil, Mali and Australia. These courses focussed on developing skills in mediation, facilitation, communication, causes and responses to conflict and especially how to break impasses in difficult and complex conflicts.

Louise Otis regularly participates in international governance and justice reform missions. Louise has created a system of transitional justice for countries affected by armed conflicts and/or environmental disasters.

In 2006, she was appointed by the United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan, to a 5-member group of international experts charged with redesigning the UN's internal justice system, including the creation of a mediation system.

Otis has lectured on Alternative Dispute Resolution at: The Council of Europe, The Harvard Fellows, Harvard University - Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, The European Conference of Judges, The International Academy of Mediators, The American Bar Association, Section of dispute resolution, the Masters' Forum of Mediators at Pepperdine University, California, The Australian Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, The Brazilian Judicial Institutions and various national courts and tribunals.

At the international level, she has been involved in the reform of the justice system in different countries namely Haiti, Mali, China and Russia.

Practicing in Quebec