Two principals. Every matter.
Equipoise is deliberately small. Every matter is led personally by one of its two principals — a mediator and former mining-company CEO, and a Magic Circle-trained disputes lawyer. Never a junior team.
Nick van der Hoven
A commercial mediator and former chief executive of a public mining company, Nick spent twenty years inside the resources and renewables sectors, leading organisations through the very conflicts he now resolves — not advising from the outside, but answerable to a board, its regulators and its shareholders. He works with operators facing stakeholder disputes, and with the landholders, Indigenous communities, climate groups and local organisations on the other side of the table, in situations where the conventional legal route would win the argument and lose the project.
- Admitted lawyer — New South Wales and South Africa
- Accredited mediator under AMDRAS, the national accreditation framework which superseded NMAS in 2025
- Professional Member, Resolution Institute
- Approved Lawyer Mediator, Law Society of New South Wales (Lawyer Mediator Accreditation Scheme)
- Panel mediator, NSW Small Business Commission
- Advanced negotiation training, Harvard Law School Program on Negotiation
- 10+ years at the table with Indigenous communities across the resources sector; formal training in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural competence
Craig Morris
A commercial lawyer and mediator, Magic Circle-trained at Clifford Chance in London, Craig ran high-stakes commercial litigation and international arbitration for twenty-five years — at Clifford Chance, and later Ashurst and HFW — across transport, energy, resources, infrastructure, engineering and construction: the disputes that Social Licence Resolution is built to make unnecessary. He has seen what a won judgment actually costs, and brings the same rigour he once brought to litigation to the harder task of reaching an agreement both sides will keep.
- Admitted — England and Wales, Australia and South Africa; current NSW practising certificate
- Registered solicitor, Law Society of New South Wales
- 25 years’ commercial litigation and international arbitration — Clifford Chance, Ashurst, HFW
- Legal-operations specialist — Lean Six Sigma, legal technology and AI
- Former General Counsel and Company Secretary; serving company director
If your situation warrants a conversation.
Everything you share is confidential and goes directly to Nick, the principal. Equipoise takes a small number of matters each year — billed hourly to scope the matter, then a single fixed fee once its complexity is clear.