Superior knowledge of the law or proficient command of advocacy skills are arguably no longer enough, by themselves, to win complex, multi-layered, document heavy arbitration cases in Finland. There is an increasing demand for arbitration practitioners to ensure cost-efficient and expeditious arbitration process with adept case management techniques and the use of the cutting-edge technology tools.
Moreover, the increasingly international nature of arbitration cases seated in Helsinki not only calls for proficient language skills from the Finnish arbitration practitioners but also understanding of different cultures and laws of different jurisdictions gained through first-hand experience.
This article explores how D&I arbitration team has recently successfully tackled these challenges in its international arbitration cases.
The Increasing Demand for Cost-Efficiency and Expeditious Arbitration Process Calls for Effective Case Management
The lack of efficiency in arbitration process has rightly been identified as a key development area in the field of international arbitration. Many leading arbitration institutions have accordingly made significant efforts towards greater efficiency in the recent amendments to their respective arbitration rules.
D&I Dispute Resolution Playbook codifies case management techniques that are proven to ensure efficient arbitration process and highly favourable results to clients”
The lack of efficiency in arbitration process has rightly been identified as a key development area in the field of international arbitration. Many leading arbitration institutions have accordingly made significant efforts towards greater efficiency in the recent amendments to their respective arbitration rules.
The Arbitration Institute of the Finland Chamber of Commerce (the “FAI”) has followed the suit. The FAI Arbitration Rules 2013 (the “FAI Rules”) impose an overall good faith obligation on parties and tribunals “to make every effort to contribute to the efficient conduct of the proceedings in order to avoid unnecessary costs and delays.” In the spirit of this overall duty, the FAI Rules impose a number of obligations on the arbitral tribunal and the parties that are designed to reduce time and costs of the proceedings, including an obligation on the arbitral tribunal to render the final arbitral award within nine months from the receipt of the final award.
The nine months’ time-limit also puts pressure on the parties and their counsel to engage in efficient case management, particularly if two rounds of written pleadings are to be exchanged, full document production exercise is to be undertaken and one or two weeks’ of oral hearing is to be conducted followed by the exchange of written post-hearing briefs.
Consequently, the D&I Arbitration team has recently devoted a significant time for the planning and designing of all the more effective and efficient case management techniques. These are described below.
D&I Dispute Resolution Playbook
Among the developments in D&I’s case management techniques is a protocol called the ‘Playbook’ that sets out step-by step detailed specific procedures for the conduct of arbitrations with an aim to make the case management and the overall arbitration process more efficient.
These procedures are not meant to be inflexible rules. Rather, through the Playbook we explore with our clients how such procedures may be applied in each particular case. The use of the Playbook ensures, however, that no time is wasted in reinventing the wheel all over again in each case as it identifies the procedures that have been proven to make the arbitration process efficient and have in the past led to highly favourable results to D&I clients.
The Use of the Cutting-Edge Technology Tools in Arbitration
Another development in D&I’s case management techniques is the greater use of the cutting edge artificial intelligence technology tools for document review, oral hearing preparation and creation of interactive electronic submissions, known as e-briefs, with hyperlinks to the relevant exhibits.
These tools make the case review, search for and organisation of the relevant evidentiary documents as well as preparations for the oral hearings expeditious and cost-efficient and enhance the speed and ease of writing and reading of submissions. These tools further involve the client in the production process to a greater extent, enabling the client to follow the counsels’ argumentation and give input on the submissions before they are filed.
D&I’s International Arbitration Team
The international arbitration cases seated in Helsinki are increasingly international in nature. The FAI has recently reported that 37% of the requests for arbitrations that are filed this year are international in the sense that at least one of the parties is a non-Finnish national.
D&I has prepared for the increasing internationalization of its cases by hiring an international team of lawyers with education and/or substantial first-hand experience from jurisdictions such as England & Wales, Sweden, Switzerland and Portugal. In addition to English, Finnish and Swedish language skills, D&I arbitration team members also speak French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian and Turkish.
Breaking the Silos by Cross-Departmental Team Work
As part of D&I Arbitration team’s commitment towards efficiency, D&I further engages in cross-departmental team work to handle its arbitration cases. D&I’s arbitration team has recently, for instance, secured a highly favourable victory for its media client in FAI arbitration against Swedish public company and its Finnish subsidiary in a domain name dispute, which involved complex contract, trademark, competition and competition law issues.
We see that to a large extent, the victory in that case was undoubtedly the result of working in a close-knit cross-departmental team involving lawyers from our arbitration, M&A, competition and intellectual property practices. We see that eliminating the silos through D&I’s Powerhouse culture presents yet another crucial element in the effective case management.
Most Recently D&I has
D&I successfully acted for Fonecta, the biggest BtoB service provider of digital sales and marketing solutions in Finland, in arbitration proceedings concerning Fonecta’s right to redirect traffic from a web address owned by Eniro to fonecta.fi.