The week-long series of events for Hong Kong Arbitration Week 2018 kicked off with a seminar hosted by Latham & Watkins entitled “Ensuring Efficiency in International Arbitration Proceedings: Tips for Asian Users”. The seminar consisted of two roundtable discussions with practitioners and professionals in the field of international arbitration. The first roundtable featured Mr. Bernard…
Kicking off our series on efficiency in arbitration, our first article, Efficient Arbitration – Part 1: Metrics sets out our idea of an efficient arbitration: Achieving the best possible outcome with the least amount of resources. A balancing act. A range of tools are available to focus the spending of resources. Resources should be invested,…
This is the first in a series of articles by Schoenherr focusing on efficiency in arbitration. In our series, we will explore various tools which serve to improve the efficiency of any given arbitration and so achieve a favourable outcome without wasting resources. But before exploring those tools we need to determine what efficient arbitration…
This blog is adapted from a keynote speech delivered at the Helsinki International Arbitration Day on 28 May 2015. Most arbitration lawyers and users of arbitration services would probably agree that efficiency is a key issue in international arbitration, or that efficiency of arbitration is a key issue. However, these two ways of stating the…
On this blog, I have previously (here and here) questioned existing practices for how arbitrators are selected and argued that a new approach is both necessary and long overdue. To briefly recap those previous posts, the selection of arbitrators is one of the most sensitive and critical moments in an arbitration. Arbitrators not only decide…
The views expressed are those of the author alone and should not be regarded as representative of or binding upon the author’s law firm.1)Dr. Pair works at LP-Legal in Zürich, Switzerland. She is licensed to practice law in the US, Germany and Switzerland, and teaches at the Universities of Geneva and St. Gallen. Consolidation of multiple…
The views expressed are those of the author alone. Technology in arbitration is of course a vast subject which has been addressed extensively by a number of writers. This article focuses briefly on the issue of reducing paper in arbitrations. It considers: How are practitioners currently dealing with paper reduction at the various stages of…
Getting over the skepticism. Since the International Bar Association adopted its Rules for Investor-State Mediation last October, there has been an uptick in discussions regarding the topic, including a mock mediation panel presented this spring during the American Society of International Law’s Annual Meeting. Nonetheless, investor-State mediation still faces skepticism from many arbitration professionals, both…
A new study of dispute resolution practices in Fortune 1,000 corporations shows that many large companies are using binding arbitration less often and relying more on mediated negotiation and other approaches aimed at resolving disputes informally, quickly and inexpensively. The 2011 survey of corporate counsel developed by researchers at Cornell University’s Scheinman Institute on Conflict…
In a recent post, here, I argued that the time has come to move on from the gumshoe clue-hunting approach currently employed to select international arbitrators. Existing practices are severely outdated and unduly expensive in an era of information and technological efficiency. The process for selecting arbitrators, I argued, should be more transparent and key…
As Rusty Park remarked, “[I]n real estate the three key elements are ‘location, location, location,’ … in arbitration the applicable trinity is ‘arbitrator, arbitrator, arbitrator.”’ Empirical studies consistently verify that parties’ ability to select arbitrators is one of the primary reasons they select arbitration as a means of dispute resolution. Parties also consistently vote with…
The China International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission (“CIETAC“) has recently published its revised Arbitration Rules, which will come into force on 1 May 2012 (the “2012 Rules“). This is the seventh revision of the CIETAC Rules since they were first published in 1956. Whilst the majority of the changes in the 2012 Rules are…
In my last blog, I offered praise for the ICDR, ICC and ICSID, for taking a number of important steps over the last few years to control excessive time and costs in international arbitration. Those initiatives already have resulted in measurable reductions in the average duration of cases. But there is more that the leading…
I’m honored to join today the fine ranks of contributors to this blog. For my first two posts, I thought I would offer a progress report of sorts on the critical task of controlling time and costs in international arbitration. This Part 1 focuses on the good news about various institutional reforms by the ICDR,…
In an emergency, swift and effective action is required. Yet in international arbitration proceedings, it can take weeks or months to constitute an arbitral tribunal. What options, then, are open to a party in need of urgent interim relief before an arbitral tribunal has been formed? In many circumstances, applying to the national courts of…
In its 4 August 2011 Decision on Jurisdiction and Admissibility, the majority of the Tribunal in Abaclat and Others (Case formerly known as Giovanna a Beccara and Others) v. Argentine Republic affirmed that it had jurisdiction to hear the claims of over 60,000 Italian investors against Argentina arising out of Argentina’s default on various sovereign…
The recent global financial crisis has had a significant effect on the types of disputes submitted to arbitration in the major Asia-Pacific financial centres. Arbitration centres have responded with various measures to cater to more cost conscious clients, and to increase the efficiency of proceedings and to speed up the way proceedings are conducted. Governments…
In a post dated March 2, 2011, I reported about a Swiss Supreme Court decision of February 20, 2009 where the Supreme Court had confirmed a CAS award which deemed an appeal withdrawn after the appellant had failed to pay the advance on costs. I indicated that I did not know what had happened to…
In the current zeitgeist focusing on the need for efficiency and speed in arbitration, we are at risk of over-correcting to the point of diminishing important functions of the arbitral process. There is little doubt that the arbitral process generally has become too much like litigation, and needs to be more efficient and less costly….
