TDM Call for Papers on Dispute Resolution from a Corporate Perspective

While corporations are one of the key stakeholders in international dispute resolution, they do not often participate in the debate, and if they do, they often speak a language completely different from that of the other stakeholders. There are numerous topics that play a key role in the daily life of corporate dispute resolution lawyers but are rarely discussed outside the corporate world or from a corporate perspective irrespective of having a significant impact on how disputes are managed and resolved, or how corporations expect this to be done.

A TDM special on dispute resolution from a corporate perspective will be edited by Kai-Uwe Karl (General Electric), Abhijit Mukhopadhyay (Hinduja Group), Michael Wheeler (Harvard Business School) and Heba Hazzaa (Cairo University), seeking to widen and deepen the debate on issues that are central to the efficient management of disputes from a corporate perspective. There is still time to submit proposals and papers for the TDM as deadline has been extended to December 15th.

Contributions should be related to any of the areas set out; however, other relevant contributions are welcome as well.

Dispute Management. While companies do not enter into contracts with the expectation of becoming embroiled in litigation, disputes do occur and are part of doing business. The assumption is that disputes should be managed systemically rather than as ad-hoc events.

Commercial Dispute Resolution – The field of negotiation. In order to successfully resolve commercial disputes, lawyers must possess, in addition to their legal, technical, and industry expertise, the skills to understand, predict and manage conflict through negotiation. While discussion of legal concepts and theory among the community of international dispute resolution lawyers is highly sophisticated, there is less of a debate on negotiation and limited exchange with other disciplines researching the field of negotiation

Managing the cost of dispute resolution. Managing the cost of dispute resolution is key, and discussions between law firms and corporations often center on the subject of how much and how to bill, including for dispute related work. While there is an ongoing debate about whether traditional hourly rate billing creates the wrong incentives, alternative fee arrangements for dispute resolution still appear to be exceptional.

The future of commercial dispute resolution – breaking new ground. The arrival of “big data”, i.e., the increasing volume, velocity, and variety of data, is likely to catapult us into a world where analytics of very large data sets may allow predictions of outcomes and behavior that currently does not exist.

For more information see here.