The activity of the London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA), as with all arbitral institutions, is vulnerable to external factors beyond its control in an ever-volatile global context. Nonetheless, the LCIA’s annual report for 2023 delivers an assessment which is decidedly on the upswing, with steady growth punctuated by institutional evolution.
An initial high-level overview first reveals that the LCIA appears to have successfully mitigated the downward trend in its caseload discussed in our previous commentary. The number of disputes referred to the LCIA increased by 13% from 2022 and returned to 2021 levels. It will likely require several more years to determine whether the institution will reprise the pattern of upward growth established in the past decade, and thus strongly rebound from the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing geopolitical crises.
