Originally from the ICDR Handbook on International Arbitration Practice - Second Edition

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I.    Introduction

Company lawyers are increasingly concerned about the cost of resolving complex transnational disputes. Law departments are measuring the cycle time of individual cases to ascertain the value of a growing number of conflict management strategies. Many in the arbitration community have expressed concern about the desire of some parties to have arbitration mirror common law litigation practices. If the parties want nothing more than a private trial by dedicated expert arbitrators, that is their prerogative, but that is not arbitration.

Arbitration should be a far more expeditious process and civil law practitioners and lawyers familiar with arbitration know that. It should be no surprise that arbitrators, with the encouragement of arbitral institutions, are experimenting with new approaches to time management in complex arbitrations.  This chapter focuses on time management in general, and the practical use and possible pitfalls of one of these techniques—the chess clock.