Michael McIlwrath

by Michael McIlwrath The new international survey on arbitral practices has just been released. This iteration (the 4th), conducted by the School of International Arbitration of Queen Mary University and White & Case, captured responses from 710 in-house counsel, external counsel specialists, and arbitrators. It sought to answer these questions: to what extent are truly harmonized practices emerging in international arbitration? And if such p

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By Michael McIlwrath On March 6, 2012, the New York Times published an Op-Ed article by Prof. Amalia D. Kessler of Stanford Law School criticizing obligatory arbitration for denying access to justice, especially in the context of consumer and employment law disputes. Here in Europe, arbitration generally cannot be made into an obligatory process for many types of disputes as it is in the United States. In Italy, for example (and it’s the same in

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by Michael McIlwrath Earlier this year, Italian lawyers went on strike to protest the country’s introduction of a law imposing a requirement to attempt settlement through mediation as a precondition to proceeding to litigate in court. Perhaps not wanting to be outdone by their European brethren, the Association of Indian Lawyers (AIL) has filed suit in the High Court of Delhi to thwart an innovate effort to provide parties with an alternative to

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by Michael McIlwrath A new law requiring mediation to be used in commercial cases comes into effect in Italy on March 21. It’s been heralded as a significant potential change and, you would think for a country with a famously overburdened court system, heartily welcomed as a caseload-reducing initiative. Proactive local chambers of commerce have been sponsoring initiatives to promote the introduction of mediation, and mediation providers have bee

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