Originally from American Review of International Arbitration - ARIA

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I. GENERAL

In choosing between competing arbitral fora for deciding an actual or potential dispute, an important issue to be considered, and one which greatly impacts the parties during the course of the arbitration (for better or worse), is the procedure that will be applied to actually decide the dispute under the relevant rules. Although there are increasing similarities among the various arbitration rules used for international disputes, especially since the recent amendments to many of these rules, differences remain.

In comparing procedures, it is useful to consider the following basic issues: (i) How involved is the arbitral institution in the procedure? (ii) How detailed are the procedures established by the rules? (iii) How flexible is the arbitrator in applying the procedure? (iv) How predictable is the procedure for the parties and the arbitrator? (v) How much control do the parties have over the procedure?

One way of thinking about international arbitration procedures is to consider the role of the arbitral institution during the process. On the one hand are ad hoc procedures (such as those under the UNCITRAL Rules) where there is no institution involved, on the other are the more hands-on procedures where the arbitral institution retains a certain degree of control over the arbitral process throughout the proceedings (of the rules most commonly considered for international arbitrations, the ICC Rules could be seen to fall in this category).