Commercial Arbitration & Mediation Attorney Serving Los Angeles, California

I believe my responsibility to the parties is to personally review the evidence, documents, and declarations provided; to personally assess the relevance, materiality, and weight to be given to that evidence; and then to personally draft the award when a sole arbitrator or chair of a panel, and participate in the deliberation and drafting of the award writing assigned by the chair when a panel member. Nevertheless, I can conceive of the rare circumstance where the case may require delegation of some procedural or routine matter.

In some cases, circumstances may suggest the use of a tribunal-appointed secretary to enhance the efficiency and coordination of the proceedings. This may occur where the dispute involves numerous issues, multiple parties, multiple witnesses, and a large volume of documents or will involve multiple motions or hearing dates, or other similar complicating circumstances. I would inform and solicit input from the parties on any proposal to retain a tribunal secretary with the agreement of the parties and the decision being addressed at the earliest possible time and preferably at or before the preliminary hearing.

E-discovery is authorized by the IBA Rules and the rules of most other arbitral institutions and I would follow whatever rules the parties agreed to follow in the arbitration. That said, broad, expansive discovery like litigation discovery is inappropriate for arbitration even when the rules allow some discovery. Therefore, my general approach to discovery when it is allowed under the agreed rules is to first require the parties to meet to narrowly and specifically define the discovery they want. Often, and this is my experience, the parties will agree on that scope and the need for further arbitrator intervention becomes unnecessary. Where the parties cannot agree, Article 3, paragraph 3 of the IBA Rules define a process for narrowing and focusing the discovery including e-discovery requests. I would opt for those or similar rules to focus discovery if any, on what was relevant and material.