Originally from World Arbitration And Mediation Review (WAMR)

We are now at the unscripted part of the day’s proceedings. My fellow panelists will introduce themselves as we get started, but we plan here today to have a conversation and we are in talk show format for that.

The theme and the vision of today’s panel is to give an opportunity for clients, corporate counsel, and arbitrators to speak directly to each other and have a conversation. Usually in this setting there is the intervention, or some might say, interception, of that conversation by outside counsel. And today we’re going to speak directly. To use a word from a talk show that my company produces, which those of you from the U.S. will probably know, The Colbert Report, this is the moment of truthiness.

To get things started this afternoon, I’m going to ask each of our participants to talk about one thing that they admire from the other constituency and one thing that they would like to gently critique about the other side. I’m going to start with Fred Bennett. By the way, Fred Bennett and Dominique Brown-Berset, for purposes of this panel, are appearing as arbitrators, and not as outside counsel. So, Fred Bennett, here’s your moment. What would you like to say to those clients out there?

FRED BENNETT: Well, as far as what I think corporate counsel do well, my vote is for their insistence on setting a budget for their lawyers and the efforts made to hold them to it. I’ve sat in a number of arbitrations where I have thought: I wonder if the client knows what the lawyer’s doing and how much is being spent on what is being done in front of our Tribunal?