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3 Int'l. In-House Counsel J. 1355 (2009-2010)
A View from an International Arbitration Customer: In Dire Need of Early Resolution

handle is hein.journals/iihcj3 and id is 11 raw text is: International In-house Counsel Journal Vol. 2, No. 8, Summer 2009, 1355-1364 The View From an International Arbitration Customer: In Dire Need of Early Resolution MICHAEL MCILWRATH AND ROLAND SCHROEDER Legal Counsel, GE, UK Michael McIlwrath and Roland Schroeder 'The View from an International Arbitration Customer: In Dire Need of Early Resolution' (2008) 74 Arbitration 3-11. 1. INTRODUCTION In-house lawyers live in a world where every day the practice of law directly interfaces with the operation of a business. Within this world, the focus is not just on winning but on advancing the overall commercial needs and objectives. If the company prevails in a dispute but the commercial goals are not advanced - and advanced in a timely fashion - then we have still fallen short in the eyes of the business. The same lesson applies to our outside counsel and to the institutions who oversee the arbitration process. As a consequence, we believe that international arbitration institutions and professionals should be more mindful of the goals and objectives of businesses that are the customers of dispute resolution services. Any business lawyer knows that even the most complex disputes usually boil down to one or two critical issues that, once decided, will either determine the lion's share of the dispute or encourage the parties to settle. And yet, the experience of many companies, including our own, is that tribunals in international commercial arbitrations, whether out of a concern for due process or other reasons, are rarely willing to grant such relief in the early stages of a proceeding when doing so would have the greatest impact and benefit for the parties.' We believe there is no denying the gap that exists today between the time generally taken in arbitration to reach decisions and the needs and objectives of businesses to assess exposure quickly and resolve disputes expeditiously. General Electric is a large transnational company spanning the breadth of industrial activities and financial services. Although the company's corporate headquarters are in the USA, it has business division headquarters and operations in many different countries. It takes steps wherever possible to avoid disputes or settle them early, but recognises that a cost of doing business is that some disputes will not settle and will require binding adjudication. That is to say, across the company and in the aggregate, we have our fair share of international arbitration experience. In October 2006, we informally surveyed our litigation colleagues in the company on the subject of early disposition of issues and gathered some war stories of instances in which an early decision on a critical issue would have made a significant difference in the business's general satisfaction with the international arbitration process. We will avoid creating any suspense and give away the ending to our story now: our colleagues were The substance of this article was initially conceived as a discussion note presented at a conference organized by IAIParis on early disposition of issues in international arbitration. Our focus is limited to the practice of international commercial arbitration, although we believe the views expressed are equally relevant to domestic arbitration practice in many countries. ISSN 1754-0607 print/ISSN 1754-0607 online International In-house Counsel Journal

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