Anti-Arbitration: Get a job, kid!
This is the time of year when law students and young lawyers begin to apply for their summer internships or jobs in international dispute resolution. Many – probably most – will carefully draft their curriculum vitae to show their serious commitment to relevant academic studies, experience in international disputes or with law firms, and participation in recently completed international competitions (mock mediation and arbitrations, and moot courts).
This is, of course, very important in order for their CV’s to be given serious attention. It is the document that will open the door to interviews, and employers will not consider applicants who do not have the right professional backgro [...]
Anti-Arbitration: Would You Prefer a Harmonized Approach or a Just a Better One?
Conventional wisdom holds that one of the virtues of international arbitration is the ability to blend divergent procedures, generally referring to civil and common law traditions. The IBA Rules of Evidence, for example, seek to strike a balance among different legal cultures. “Harmonization” and “flexibility” are the terms commonly used to refer to this mixing of practices.
But if one particular approach can be shown to be superior for certain types of disputes, is employing a different or compromise approach actually sub-optimal?
I confess that I am as guilty as the next person when it comes to promoting the value of harmonization and flexibility when discussing international arbi [...]
Anti-Arbitration: 10 Things To Do Before The Arbitration Gets Underway
Even when I think I know what I’m doing (be it self-confidence or self-deception), I still find checklists can be useful. Sometimes they can help validate or compare processes with others, but mostly they are good at making sure I haven’t forgotten some critical step.
Below is a checklist for when someone – a business client, my boss, or a legal department colleague – has informed me that an arbitration is possible, likely, or has just been filed.
1. Check for any pre-arbitration procedures and assess whether to comply with them
Of course, the first thing any litigator will do when presented with a contractual dispute is to check the contract’s dispute resolution and governing law [...]
Anti-Arbitration: It’s Not Hard to Mediate During Arbitral Proceedings
This month marks two interesting developments in arb/med.
First, as Kluwer wants you to know, they have added a mediation blog in addition to the arbitration blog. Well, it’s about time.
Second, September heralds the much celebrated debut of the ICC’s new “Arbitration and ADR Rules”, at least for people who celebrate such things.
As the name of the volume implies, the ICC is now linking its arbitration and mediation practices, described in the introduction as “two discrete but complementary dispute resolution procedures.”
Again, it’s about time.
From all that has been said and written about arb/med in the field of international dispute resolution, one could be forgiven for thin [...]
Anti-Arbitration: Answers to the Summer Quiz!
Last week’s summer quiz on international arbitration and mediation provoked a happy flurry of answers from around the world from a broad range of practitioners. Before we get to the answers, here are some interesting observations from the empirical data that we unintentionally gathered.
Conclusive Empirical Data about International Arbitration and Mediation Practitioners (“Practitioners”)
As readers may recall, the quiz offered a free lunch or dinner in Florence to the first person to send in a perfect score or closest to it. Based on the objective data acquired via the responses, we can now declare the following with a high degree of certainty:
- International arbitration & mediatio [...]
Anti-Arbitration: The Summer Quiz!
If you live or work somewhere in the northern half of the planet, odds are that at some point this summer you’ll find yourself on a beach, cityscape, mountain, or other scenic destination surrounded with children relaxedly drawing on their coloring pads, and grandparents working attentively at their crossword.
What about those of us who are dedicated dispute resolution professionals? Of course, there is something to be said for reading that Fifth Post-Hearing Submission while at the beach. But until Gary Born’s treatise on International Commercial Arbitration is set to music and performed in Salzburg in some future year, shouldn’t we have some brain candy, too?
Welcome to the Summer [...]
