Over the last 5 years Rachael has built a thriving mediation practice. She is ranked in Chambers and Partners (2025) as one of the top 50 commercial mediators in the UK, and the only mediator in Scotland, and as a Leading UK Mediator in Legal 500 (2025). She has mediated over 100 commercial and civil disputes across the UK ranging in value from tens of thousands to multimillion pound claims and with up to 6 separately represented parties and 40 participants.
Rachael consistently receives excellent client feedback and has been described as “hugely skilful”, “impressive”, “incredible”, “the best mediator I’ve come across in a long time” and “my first choice of mediator”. She is renowned for her calm, assured and personable manner, her thorough preparation, and her ability to grasp complex technical issues and to quickly understand multiple issues and competing interests. Rachael is also praised for her tenacity and resilience in helping the parties to come to a resolution, even when they remain some considerable distance apart.
Rachael is the founder of Squaring Circles, winner of a UK National Mediation Award in 2020. She brings to her mediation practice over 12 years’ experience as a solicitor at two of the UK’s most successful premium law firms, where she specialised in the resolution of commercial, professional negligence, insolvency, real estate, corporate and shareholder disputes.
Reflecting her former practice, Rachael is routinely appointed in a broad range of commercial and civil disputes. She has a strong reputation in commercial, professional negligence, construction, real estate, insolvency, company, business interruption, partnership, boardroom, family business related claims and inheritance and executry disputes. She is on the mediation panels for the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (CIArb), the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) and the Scottish Land Commission. She handles disputes involving corporates, insurers, private, public and third sector clients and has mediated disputes with parties from the UK, Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, the USA, Canada and Australia.
Rachael is a Distinguished Fellow of the International Academy of Mediators (IAM), an invitation-only organisation of the world’s pre-eminent commercial mediators. She is also certified by the International Mediation Institute (IMI) and the Singapore International Mediation Institute (SIMI) and a registered civil and commercial mediator with the Civil Mediation Council (CMC) and Scottish Mediation. She trained in negotiation and mediation at Harvard Law School and the Strauss Institute at the Pepperdine Caruso School of Law respectively. She is a Fellow of ADR ODR International and on the mediation panels for the Korean Commercial Arbitration Board (KCAB) in Seoul and the ADGM Dispute Resolution Centre in Abu Dhabi.
Rachael is a member of the training faculty on the RICS Mediation Training Programme and until 2023 taught negotiation skills on the Online LLM in Dispute Resolution at the University of Aberdeen, a UK top-10 law school.