Originally from Electronic Disclosure in International Arbitration

One of the commonly-perceived differences between international arbitrators from Anglo-American and civil law backgrounds is their attitude and approach to the production of documents.

This chapter considers the extent to which the need to deal with requests for production of electronic documents, and the rapidly advancing technological resources available to assist parties to comply with such requests, are leading to an international convergence in approach and to truly international procedural norms for dealing with production requests in international arbitration. It argues that the particular features of dealing with electronic documents, and the advances in the technology available to assist in this process, supersede much of the traditional debate between lawyers from common law and civil law backgrounds. It concludes that, while electronic production is commonly seen as the burdensome intrusion of litigation-style discovery and therefore an unwelcome development in international arbitration, the opposite may in fact be closer to the reality as a result of advances in the technology available to manage the identification and production of relevant documents.