Imagine a hearing room full of high-definition monitors replacing the millions of paper folders involved in your arbitration. From small, local to large-scale, international arbitrations, innovative electronic arbitration (eArbitration) technology allows you to go paperless. By transforming how your legal team works you can make arbitral processes easier, quicker, and more cost-effective. International collaboration The major benefits of eArbitrations lie in their collaborative potential; they enable collaboration between legal teams, experts, and clients in highly scalable and customisable cloud-based workspaces. [...]

Greg Rooney by Greg Rooney*   Mediation has an identity issue - but it’s not its fault. Mediators - and the profession they practise called mediation - merely sit as innocent bystanders observing how the modern collaborative interconnected economy has challenged the identity and, in some cases, the very existence of the established professions and commercial and social institutions. We now live in a time where a world of connectivity and fluidity has replaced the 20th- century Newtonian [...]

Rouein Momen Rouein Momen The International Court of Arbitration, a branch of the International Chamber of Commerce (‘ICC’), has renewed its ‘Note to Parties and Arbitral Tribunals on the Conduct of Arbitration’, of which the latest updates have come into force on 1 January 2019. The aim of these amendments was to improve the transparency and efficiency of the conduct of arbitration, and further, to push the ICC rules of arbitration to compete with the ICSID rules. For [...]

By Lena Lindinger*   With the Australian Law Reform Commission expected to publish a discussion paper on third party funding in litigation, we want to take a look at where third party funding in international arbitration stands today in Australia and the rest of the world. Third Party Funding in International Arbitration Third Party Funding (TPF) arises when investors finance a legal claim in exchange for influence over case management and a part in the damages recoverable from the case.1 [...]

By Tony Song* Tony Song In every minute, over 12,986,111 texts messages are sent around the world.1 Each day, there is an output of over 2.5 quintillion bytes of data.2 By 2020, for every person on earth, 1.7 MB of data will be created per second. Data is today’s most valuable currency – it is borderless, vast and multi-purposive. With the ever-increasing ubiquity of smartphones, laptops and cloud computing, data is also more portable than ever. The natural by-product [...]

Ian Davidson SC and Deborah Lockhart Abstract In Australia, Alternative Dispute Resolution (commonly known as ADR) has grown significantly; not merely in the footsteps of its international popularity, but as a frontrunner in a global push for timely and cost effective dispute resolution. No ADR process has done this more so than mediation. It is estimated that 80-90% of civil cases are disposed of pre-trial in Australia.1 When speaking at the Australian Disputes Centre in 2017, NSW Chief Justice Tom [...]

By Tony Song* His Excellency, High Commissioner of Kenya, Isaiya Kabira with Deborah Lockhart at the 55th Anniversary of Jamhuri Day in Canberra. Jamhuri Day marks the independence and birth of Kenya as an independent nation-state. On the 12 December 1963, Kenya achieved sovereignty with its own government led by Jomo Kenyatta as Prime Minister. A year later, on this day, Kenya officially declared itself a republic. The modern history of Kenya is intertwined with British colonialism. First [...]

This year’s Intercollegiate Negotiation and Arbitration Competition (INC) in Tokyo has been won by Team Australia – 21 students from 9 Australian universities.  Team Australia won the competition outright, as well as the Squire Patton Boggs Award for the highest scoring team in English-language Negotiation. In an historic first, Team Australia also won the Herbert Smith Freehills Award the highest scoring team in Arbitration, in Japanese.  That award was presented by Team Australia alumna Eriko Kadota, Dispute Desolution Associate in [...]

  As a law student from Macquarie University with a love for the practical elements of the law, I have sincerely enjoyed my internship with the Australian Disputes Centre. Since my very first day, I witnessed first-hand the prominence and importance of alternative dispute resolution in the modern legal industry. As an intern I was involved in facilitating mediation training in both Sydney and Melbourne, and also attained an 'ADR and Dispute Settlement' from ADC. This experience not only prompted me to [...]

Dual proceedings will not stick - Kraft Foods Group Brands LLC v Bega Cheese Limited [2018] FCA 549 The case concerns the restraining of arbitral proceedings in the US District Court of the Southern District of New York in the matter between Kraft Foods Group Brands LLC (‘Kraft’) and Bega Cheese Limited (‘Bega’). In 2017, Bega acquired certain rights to use the Kraft brand including the right to sell peanut butter in Australia using its jar design. Bega then aired various [...]