Beverley Vara has been a full time mediator since 2013, the year she transferred to the Bar after twenty years as a solicitor, the last ten as a litigation partner and Head of Real Estate Litigation at Allen & Overy LLP. She is regularly appointed in substantial commercial disputes, frequently those with a property or real estate dimension and often where one or more parties are based outside the UK, and she mediates across the full range of commercial and private client work.
She has a reputation for managing strong personalities and cross cultural clashes. Both parties and legal advisors in mediations appreciate her straight talking, practical approach and her ability to mix a rigorous legal analysis of the case with empathy to help the parties find a solution that works for all of them. Beverley is frequently called upon to mediate disputes where one or more of the parties is based outside of the UK with recent mediations including participants from USA, UAE, India, Italy, France, Nigeria and South Africa.
She has been listed as a leading mediator in both Chambers & Partners and Legal 500 for many years. She has written articles on a variety of mediation topics, and regularly gives lectures and seminars on mediation. She coaches and assesses on Mediation Skills Training Courses both in the UK and internationally.
Beverley believes mediation is most successful when decisions are set in a commercial context. She spends a lot of time in private sessions discussing the legal risk involved in the dispute and the commerciality of the dispute with the parties and their advisors. This helps leaders representing companies feel comfortable with the commerciality of settlements. Consequently, she has a very high settlement rate in her mediation work.
Beverley also set up a pro bono mediation service for the Anglican Diocese of Southwark to assist Parishes where disputes arise and is a mediator on that panel.
PROFESSIONAL BACKGROUND
Beverley was a litigation partner and Head of Real Estate litigation at Allen & Overy LLP until 2013 when, after 20 years practice as a litigator in the City, she transferred to the Bar to become a full time mediator.
Before her legal career, she undertook postgraduate research mapping how the human brain decodes spoken language and was lead author of a paper¹ which is part of the body of work which underpins how modern speech recognition and natural language processing (AI) systems are trained and evaluated.
She also worked in a major Bank for a couple of years.
¹Lead author, "The strong/weak syllable distinction in English", Fear, B.D., Cutler, A. and Butterfield S., Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 97, 1893-1904 (1995). Published under her maiden name, Fear; now working as Beverley Vara.
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Expertise
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ADR
Beverley accepts mediation appointments in disputes in the following areas:
- Banking & Finance
- Commercial Contracts
- Construction and Engineering Insolvency
- Nuisance/Negligence PFI
- Planning
- Professional Negligence Private Client
- Property
- Sale of Goods & Services Tort
- Trusts
- Warranties
- Wrongful Arrest
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Feedback
- “A clear, practical, expert contribution made a very difficult day easier.”
- “Beverley was excellent. The way she handled both joint and individual meetings was great.” “A sound handling of the process.”
- “We thought she was excellent! our client was very pleased with her.”
- “She did a very good job moving the parties from their original positions.”
- “I think Beverley was very helpful and judged the tone of the mediation well.
- “I thought Beverley was extremely professional and knowledgeable in the way she dealt with the issues. It was not the easiest mediation in terms of the positions of the parties with regard to the claim and in terms of the various personalities at play but Beverley treated the parties fairly, challenged us when appropriate and kept the mediation moving in order to achieve a settlement.”
- “Beverley did a very good job and kept the parties focused. Not an easy task with so many strands to address”
- “I’ve had a spate of mediations lately and definitely felt this was the best managed of the lot”
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Directory Quotes
Chambers UK - Mediator (2026)
"Beverley Vara works hard, reality-tests effectively, and is good at persuading people to settle".
Chambers UK - Mediator (2026)
"Beverley Vara is a consummate mediator, very experienced and very shrewd".
Chambers UK - Mediator (2026)
"Beverley Vara is an excellent mediator".
Who's Who Legal - Commercial Mediation (2024)
"Beverley is an incredibly effective mediator"
Who's Who Legal - Commercial Mediation (2024)
"She is always well prepared and is a proactive practitioner"
Who's Who Legal Guide - Commercial Mediation (2024)
"She is one of the best mediators"
Chambers UK (2024)
"Beverley Vara concentrates her mediation practice on commercial disputes. She displays notable expertise in real estate-related cases.”
Chambers UK (2024 )
"She's very impressive, very determined and clients like her a lot. She's hard-working and encourages the parties to negotiate, discuss and not walk away. My client was very impressed, and her patience is extraordinary".
Chambers UK (2024)
"She takes a no-nonsense approach to mediation. Beverley is very sharp and wastes no time getting to the core issues in a dispute to focus minds and see whether a resolution can be reached. She has a confident yet approachable mediation style and is a go-to mediator for thorny disputes.”
Legal 500 (2022)
“Beverley is a sharp and patient mediator. Great at absorbing all the key information, listens to all parties’ concerns, and is very adept at helping negotiations to successful conclusions.”
Chambers UK (2021)
“Likes to grasp cases by the scruff of the neck and is good at handling challenging situations.”
Chambers UK (2020)
Beverley is “very good at getting people to think in the right away about a case. She gets on top of the detail quickly and sees points that might have been missed.”
Chambers (2019)
"She's very good at getting people to think and to negotiate, and she gets cases quickly."
Chambers (2018)
"Beverley is firm, straight-talking and comes up with creative ideas to try to achieve a resolution. She grasps legal issues quickly, which enables the parties to concentrate on settlement discussions."
Chambers & Partners (2017)
“Beverley Vara is a “very supportive and helpful” mediator who is regularly appointed to property disputes and cases involving professional negligence. One impressed observer states that “she was very good and skilled in moving the parties to settle” and “she was instrumental in getting the parties out of their entrenched positions.”"