LISBON ARBITRATION

It is widely accepted in the international arbitration community that arbitral tribunals may draw adverse inferences from a party’s failure to produce a document requested in the proceedings. As an example of that, the IBA Rules on the Taking of Evidence in International Arbitration (“IBA Rules”) specifically recognize this possibility in Article 9.5. In this context, an adverse inference can be described as the presumption that an unproduced document is unfavourable to the interests of the p...

1.    Not rarely, in legal commentary dedicated to arbitration law (and, under its influence, in some courts’ decisions) one comes across the proposition that the court before which an arbitral award was challenged is “prohibited from examining the merits of the decision rendered by the arbitral tribunal”. In this article, we intend to show that this proposition is more mythological than real and cannot be accepted, if understood in accordance with the literal meaning of the words forming ...

Much has been said and written in the last couple of years about Artificial Intelligence and its possible impact in the legal practice. Experts seem, however, far from reaching a consensus on the effects that the so-called “next industrial revolution” may have on the legal business. Will lawyers be replaced by robots? What about arbitrators? Are traditional practitioners about to go on their Last Crusade? The term “Artificial Intelligence” is said to have been coined in 1956 when a compute...

Technology advances of the last decade have irreversibly changed the way we communicate, and international arbitration is no exception to this new reality. Although some of the possibilities allowed by the use of new technologies, such as virtual hearing rooms and the use of highly hyperlinked submissions, may still not be standard at this point – and, most importantly, may not suit or be cost-effective in all kinds of arbitral procedures –, it is already common practice between arb...

The International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) has recently revised its Note to Parties and Arbitral Tribunals on the Conduct of the Arbitration under the ICC Rules of Arbitration (“Note”). The Note provides the users of ICC arbitration (including parties, arbitral tribunals and administrative secretaries) with useful, practical guidance on the conduct of arbitrations under the ICC Rules of Arbitration (last amended in 2017). Importantly, the new version of the Note applies to “all ICC a...