Originally from Behind the Scenes in International Arbitration

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CONCLUSIONS -- TAKING PRIDE IN ARBITRATING

I wrote in the introduction to this book that I would not be dealing with the legal aspects of arbitration. Reading again what I have written, however, I see that my legal training has sometimes got the better of me and that I have been unable to avoid, in certain situations, taking a view on questions of law, even if only in passing. I would ask my lawyer readers not to scoff at this but instead to forgive me. Whatever legal content there is in this book cannot be dignified with the name of scientific research, but is a matter of superficial observation.

Another thing I have come to realize is that, in discussing the role of in-house lawyers, my attachment to the function has led me to paint what is perhaps too idealistic a picture of what their role should be. This comes from my disappointment at noticing how absent they are from the international arbitral stage. That absence accounts for the paucity of anecdotes in the chapter devoted to them, by contrast with the others. Those few anecdotes are in fact just a few of my own experiences as in-house counsel. This book has merely been an attempt to take advantage of a summer break to gather my experiences of arbitration, put them in order and make them available, presumptuously perhaps, to all the actors in arbitration: parties, counsel, in-house lawyers, arbitrators and arbitral institutions. Their roles, as I said in the introduction, are not always as distinct as they should be, but at times give rise to confusion, if not actual conflict, of interests. The assumption underlying this effort is one of hope that these experiences might have some general relevance. If they do not, my readers must forgive me: I will at least have the consolation of knowing that I have myself found it very helpful and enjoyable to gather those experiences and put them into order (though my wife might not have enjoyed it quite as much, given the time it has taken me during what was supposed to be a family vacation).