27-02-2023

Last week, the International Chamber of Commerce Qatar ‘ICC Qatar’ in collaboration with international law firm ‘Crowell & Moring’ organized an interactive workshop titled ‘Two Critical Ways to Improve Your Readiness for Arbitration’, aimed at  helping companies ensure arbitration readiness prior to hiring outside counsel. The participants, who received a certificate of attendance at the end of the session, were provided with top tips on how to improve their arbitration readiness from three of Crowell’s attorneys, Werner Eyskens, Partner and Evelien Van Espen, Associate, of the firm’s Brussels office, and Tarek Saad, Senior Counsel at Crowell’s Doha office. In a statement, ICC Qatar’s representative said that the workshop reviewed the best practices in commercial disputes, and the advantages offered by Arbitration as a way to settle commercial disputes, including technical efficiency, speed, confidentiality, and simplicity of procedures. “Our aim of organizing this event is to spread the culture of Arbitration in the Qatari business community, as one of the alternative means to resolve commercial disputes”, added the ICC Qatar representative. The workshop was held as the ICC marks 100 years of its International Court of Arbitration with a declaration setting out a vision to lead dispute resolution for the next century. Charbel Maakaron, Managing Partner of Crowell Doha and Chairman of ICC Qatar’s Arbitration and ADR Commission, commented, “This was a timely workshop as the State of Qatar continues to see a significant increase in the use of arbitration clauses in contracts and in the number of arbitrations.” He added, “As part of our vision for ICC Qatar, we remain keen to actively promote arbitration and to maintain a strong base of experienced legal professionals. Hosting such workshops enables the Crowell team to provide members of the local legal community with the necessary knowledge and tips to ensure that they are well equipped in times of dispute.” As arbitrations typically involve a much different procedure and sequence of events than Qatar court proceedings, the workshop focused particularly on document disclosure and witness evidence as the most important elements of an arbitration. Werner Eyskens explained that businesses are increasingly viewing arbitration as an alternative way to settle disputes, which offers advantages over court intervention. “The advantages are the perceived status of arbitration as an independent forum, the possibility of selecting the languages of proceedings and to designate specialized arbitrators, the confidentiality of the proceedings, their controlled document production process and the opportunity for parties to put forward their own specialists,” he said.\n