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Signature Litigation: Legal privilege: far from resolved

Abdulali Jiwaji

Partner, Signature Litigation

[email protected]

Daniel Hayward-Hughes

Associate, Signature Litigation

[email protected]

The right of clients to preserve the confidentiality in advice provided by their lawyer is fundamental to English common law. Other common law jurisdictions such as Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Hong Kong have all gone one step further than England by entrenching legal advice privilege and protection from disclosure into statute. Legal advice privilege applies to confidential communications between a lawyer and client for the purpose of seeking or obtaining legal advice. Problems can arise though when it is unclear who the instructing client is and whether the lawyer is actually a ‘lawyer’ for the purposes of the common law test for privilege.

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Signature Litigation: Policing arbitration – can accountability deficit be addressed?

Natalia Chumak

Partner, Signature Litigation

[email protected]

Nick Storrs

Senior associate, Signature Litigation

[email protected]

Over recent decades, arbitration for dispute resolution has become increasingly popular. Commercial parties are becoming far more amenable to resolving their differences by private means rather than through national court systems, which can be more costly and time-intensive. There is, of course, nothing wrong in engaging in a private, consensual process and there are numerous advantages of doing so. But the framework within which such disputes are resolved must be unimpeachably robust in order to meet the objective in any dispute resolution process: to do justice between the parties in accordance with the law. Accordingly parties’ autonomous right to submit disputes to arbitration needs to be structured within a legislative framework which governs and regulates the arbitral process. This is in part to:

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Travers Smith: CPR 36: time for a re-boot?

Jan-Jaap Baer

Partner, Travers Smith

Emma Reynolds

Associate, Travers Smith

In April this year, CPR 36 underwent the latest in a series of amendments. These amendments did not amount to a root-and-branch overhaul of the regime but rather to a reorganisation and codification of existing principles, largely designed to address issues which have been thrown up by recent court decisions. The changes were generally welcomed as providing a greater degree of clarity for litigants when navigating their way through what remain complex and densely drafted rules. However, there remains a question as to whether a more radical overhaul of the rules is desirable.

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Mishcon de Reya: The dangers of repeat appointments

Karel Daele

Partner, Mishcon de Reya

[email protected]

The issue of repeat appointments has been news in International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) cases in recent times, but what’s the concern? The independence of the arbitrator is one of the cornerstones of arbitration. An independent arbitrator is one who has no close relationship with a party in the arbitration or its counsel, be it of a financial, professional or personal nature. It is crucial that an arbitrator has no such relationships because they might induce the arbitrator to decide in favour of one of the parties, irrespective of the merits of the case.

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Jasbir Dhillon QC: Freezing injunctions and receivership in support of arbitration

Jasbir Dhillon QC

Brick Court Chambers

A frequently encountered problem for any claimant in international arbitration arises where the respondent seeks to make enforcement of any arbitral award against their assets difficult or impossible. In this article, I describe two forms of injunction available from the English court that provide an effective remedy for this widespread problem.

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Game over: Debevoise, A&O and Fenwick & West lead on Candy Crush maker’s sale for $6bn

Debevoise & Plimpton, Allen & Overy (A&O) and Fenwick & West have scored roles advising video game maker Activision Blizzard on the acquisition of Candy Crush creator King Digital Entertainment for $5.9bn – one of the largest deals in the fast-growing interactive entertainment industry.

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