16 June 2022: Professor Doug Jones AO and Professor Janet Walker CM participate in 34th Annual ITA Workshop and Annual Meeting

Professor Doug Jones AO and Professor Janet Walker CM will participate in the 34th Annual ITA Workshop and Annual Meeting, taking place 15-17 June 2022 in Austin, Texas (USA). Professor Doug Jones AO will moderate a panel discussion on the Role of Arbitrators at 3.30pm CET on Thursday 16 June. On the same day at 4.40pm CET Professor Janet Walker CM will participate as a panellist on arbitrators’ deliberations post-hearing. For more details please view the conference schedule below. The ITA (Institute for Transactional Arbitration) Workshop, held in Dallas on the third Thursday in June every year since 1989, is widely recognised as the leading conference in the field in the United States.

For further details or to register for this conference, please click here. 

THE ROLE OF THE ARBITRATORS – WHAT THEY CAN AND SHOULD DO TO ENSURE THAT A HEARING IS EFFICIENT, EFFECTIVE AND LEADS TO A SOUND RESULT

The most efficient and effective hearings are often those where the arbitrators take an active role in shaping the submissions made and the evidence heard. This may involve arbitrators guiding or even leading on the list of issues (for example, by directing the parties on what issues they wish to be addressed on), pro-actively requiring uniform rules for the preparation and content of witness statements (as for example now exists in the English Commercial Court), proposing (and persuading the parties to agree to) the tribunal ruling on the papers, or giving early directions for those witnesses and/or experts whose evidence the tribunal does not consider to be relevant and thus dispensing with the need for cross examination.

Moderator: Doug Jones, Sydney Arbitration Chambers, Sydney

Panelists:

• Grant Hannessian, Hanessian ADR, LLC, New York
• Benjamin Hughes, The Arbitration Chambers, Singapore
• Laurent Lévy, Lévy Kaufmann-Kohler, Geneva

ARBITRATORS’ DELIBERATIONS POST-HEARING

A panel session in which the arbitrators themselves will open the door to their deliberations and discuss matters including how they organize deliberations (do they wait until the hearing is over or do they discuss the evidence as the hearing progresses), how they address and resolve  disagreement, what they do if deliberations reveal they need further submissions from the parties, how useful they find post hearing submissions (over oral closings) in assisting their decision making, and what the dynamics of having a dissenting arbitrator are (or what it is like being the dissenting voice in a majority).

Moderator: John Fellas, Hughes Hubbard & Reed LLP, New York

Panelists:

• Lucy Reed, Arbitration Chambers, New York
• Christopher Boog, Schellenberg Wittmer Ltd, Zurich
• Janet Walker, Toronto Arbitration Chambers, Toronto