Arbitration has long had a practice of arbitrators’ doing their own work. As a result, senior lawyers from large law firms have had to adjust to organizing their own files and conducting the kind of review of records and legal sources that, in their practice, they delegate to junior lawyers. But this is not the universally followed practice, particularly in continental Europe, where persons known as “law secretaries” are not infrequently used to assist arbitral tribunals. Recent guidelines issued by two institutions that administer arbitrationsthe International Chamber of Commerce and JAMShave dealt with the issues raised by the use of law secretaries, and do so in markedly different ways.
The most recent White & Case/Queen Mary College survey of arbitration users and practitioners confirms what was generally understood through anecdotal evidence: that law secretaries are fairly commonly used, especially in Continental Europe, where, according to the survey, they were used by 35 percent of the respondents, compared to much lower percentages in the United States and Asia. The law secretary is frequently a young lawyer who is retained by the tribunal, usually the chairman of a three-person panel, to assist in various ways in the conduct of an arbitration and the preparation of the award.
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