INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION 1/3LY
IN CONVERSATION WITH LOUK AS MISTELIS 03
IN CONVERS AT ION WI TH LOUK A S MI ST EL I S QUEEN MARY UNI VERS I T Y OF LONDON Ben Knowles, Partner at Clyde & Co LLP, in conversation with Loukas Mistelis, Director of the School of International Arbitration at Queen Mary University of London
T HE DE V EL OPMEN T OF A RB I T R AT I ON - I DEOL OG I C A L , ORG A NI C OR H A PH A Z A RD? BEN Howdid you develop an interest in international arbitration and become Director at QueenMary University of London (QMUL)? LOUK A S Having studied conflict of laws and international business law, it was clear tome that jurisdictional conflicts were set and inflexible, but that arbitrationwas developing and offering amuchmore interesting area for study. About amonth after I finishedmy doctorate, I sawan advertisement for my job at QMUL in the Economist; I applied, and the rest is history. QueenMary, and London generally, offer a very international environment inwhich to operate, and I’ve been greatly assisted by colleagues in the School and its founder, Julian Lew. I believe QMUL was the first institution in the world to teach arbitration, and that it has become one of the best, and certainly one of themost prominent, places to study arbitration. BEN It’s true that arbitration is an interesting field, particularly its development as a legal practice because, unlike other areas, it’s been almost entirely driven bymodern law firms. Over the years, I’ve seen three distinct approaches contribute to the way the arbitrationmarket looks today. Certain European law firms created international arbitration as a ‘specialist capability’ to attract work: mainly those firms which couldn’t rely on a sizeable corporate client base to generate work of that nature. I’d be fascinated to knowwhether this was a strategic and deliberate tactic, or whether it wasmore a happy accident which thenmushroomed!
Some international firms drove their arbitration practices off the back of their corporate client base andwork. In fact, some of today’s ‘big names’ in arbitration successfully cultivated their reputation on thismodel. But we’re now seeing a trend toward individuals with established clients and contactsmoving out of these powerhouses and into boutiques, taking both their reputations andwork with them. It’ll be interesting to see how that plays out. The thirdmethod is the approach Clyde&Co adopted: a disputes-led offering with the onus on resolving disputes using whichever method ismost efficient and effective for the client, rather than driving our own arbitration agenda. That said, it feels as thoughwe’re entering another period of evolutionwithin law firms. What’s your perspective on this? LOUK A S I think arbitrationwill continue to evolve, as it has over the last fewdecades. Since the New York Convention in 1958, arbitration has developed organically into a sophisticated, elitist practice of the law - I would call this the first golden period! Looking at the big picture, its growth in New York was driven by Central European migrants who set up law firms practising international arbitration inManhattan. In fact, most of the first American textbooks on international arbitrationwere written by Germans. Across Europe, the development of arbitration in France, England and Switzerlandwas entirely ideological. It gained a reputation as a higher practice of law, andwas associatedwith good lunches, posh dinners and nice venues, as well as having the luxury of spending time over the dispute. The New York Convention then came to reflect this cosmopolitanism, and the conception of arbitration as superior was supported and reinforced by the governing bodies, such as the International Court of Arbitration (ICC).
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