Originally from:
The Art of Advocacy in International Arbitration - 2nd Edition - Hardcover
The Art of Advocacy in International Arbitration - 2nd Edition - Electronic
Preview Page - Chapter 1
CULTURAL DIFFERENCES IN
ADVOCACY IN INTERNATIONAL
ARBITRATION
Jan Paulsson
If you want to observe a real clash of cultures, one might be
tempted to say, it is hard to find more sound and fury than what
emerges when rival French lawyers appear on both sides, or rival
Londoners on both sides, or Cairenes or New Yorkers! For then, it
often seems, the combatants leave no prisoners, and urge vehemently
that starkly different procedural arrangements be adopted, each camp
insisting all the while that what they seek is but the normal course of
well-ordered events. Their opponents, of course, are the ones
attempting to mislead the tribunal with self-serving requests that
make a mockery of due process!
How can this be, when both lawyers are members of the same
bar association or law society? The answer is that on any given day
one set of lawyers embodies the culture of claimants, while the
opponent represents the culture of respondents. Here is the real
clash, it may seem: the "justice delayed, justice denied" school vs. the
"nothing's settled until it's settled right" school.
Confirmation of this observation seems to be provided, by the
way of contrast, in the polite diffidence often exhibited when
opposing counsel truly come from different cultures, as each side
outdoes the other in proffering well-mannered, tentative suggestions,
full of solicitous understanding for the other side, as though all feel it
incumbent to act as goodwill ambassador attesting to the decency
and urbanity of their own legal community.
Is there then no true clash of cultures in international arbitration?
Are there only the different procedural preferences that commend
JAN PAULSSON is co-head of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer's
international arbitration and public international law groups. He
holds degrees from Harvard, Yale and the University of Paris. He has
acted as counsel or arbitrator in hundreds of international arbitrations.
He has conducted cases under the ICC, UNCITRAL, ICSID, LCIA,
and AAA Rules, as well as before the International Court of Justice.
He is President of the London Court of International Arbitration, the
World Bank Administrative Tribunal, and the EBRD Administrative
Tribunal; and is a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in
The Hague. Mr. Paulsson holds the Michael Klein Distinguished
Scholar Chair at the University of Miami and is a Visiting Professor at
the London School of Economics. He is a Profesor Honorario of the
Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas. He is the author of several
textbooks and numerous articles, in particular the standard reference
work ICC Arbitration (3rd edition 2000) which he co-authors with
Messrs WL Craig and WW Park. His monograph Denial of Justice in
International Law was published by Cambridge University Press in
2005. He speaks English, French, Spanish and Swedish.
