This paper, given the « Ciceronian » title « To convince the arbitrator », is very unlikely to offer new guidance to international arbitration practitioners, such as lawyers, arbitrators and legal experts, who will themselves have already experienced efforts to convince an arbitrator in arbitral proceedings.
Its humble objective, apart from offering some entry-level instruction to « juniors » about to take their first steps on the way to becoming seasoned professionals in the field, is primarily to record in writing, in a methodological form, what remains today a part of an oral tradition: the methods and experience of all those who engage in the intellectual combat of arbitral proceedings. For teams of lawyers, it also provides an insight into the likely reactions of the arbitrators they appear before, reactions which will not necessarily be those that they expected when they devised their litigation strategy.
This article also has the virtue of systematically comparing Statebased and arbitral proceedings so as to identify and explain their similarities and differences.
Finally, in the spirit of the great French jurist, Jean Carbonnier, this paper aims, by building on sociological considerations, to reflect on the practice of arbitration law and explore ways of making it even more effective.
The study finds a natural division into two parts by focusing on the behaviour of first the lawyer and, second, the witness; the two main protagonists in arbitral proceedings facing private judges whom they must convince using didactic and rhetorical tools.
ASA Bulletin