Arbitration at the Frontier: Courage, Craft, and Technology

International arbitration faces two simultaneous pressures: users demanding proceedings that are faster, cheaper, and better fitted to their disputes, and technology reshaping how those disputes are built and resolved. Arbitration at the Frontier: Courage, Craft, and Technology convenes arbitrators, counsel, in-house users, and institutional leaders for a keynote and two panels on procedural courage, the enduring craft of advocacy, and the arrival of AI in the arbitral process.

Sponsors: Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute; the Negotiation & Dispute Resolution Program

Keynote

Sarah Vasani
“Breaking Due Process Paranoia: The Case for Procedural Courage in International Arbitration”
Bryan Cave Moot Courtroom | 12:00 -12:50 pm

Arbitration made a simple promise: a process designed to fit the dispute rather than inherited from national courts. Too often, tribunals default to litigation-style case management, driven by an understandable but overstated fear of due process challenge. Drawing on recent empirical research into due process paranoia, institutional developments, and her own experience as counsel and arbitrator, Sarah Vasani will urge tribunals to exercise their discretion with greater confidence, and will set out concrete tools counsel can use to cut cost and duration.

Panel One

“The Future is Here: Effective Written and Oral Advocacy in International Arbitration“
Bryan Cave Moot Courtroom | 1:00 – 2:00 pm
Speakers

Moderator

What persuades a tribunal, and what has changed about how advocates get there? This panel brings together arbitrators and users of arbitration for a candid conversation about the skills, tools, and habits of mind that make advocacy effective. Panelists will address the growing use of AI for document review, legal research, chronology building, and hearing preparation — and where these tools reach their limits. Efficiency gains are real; judgment, strategy, and the human dimensions of persuasion remain the advocate’s own.

Panel Two

“Use of AI in International Arbitration: Tool, Risk, or Decision-Maker?“
Bryan Cave Moot Courtroom | 2:00 – 3:00 pm
Speakers

Moderator

Five years ago, AI was a productivity tool. Today it touches legal research, document review, witness preparation, damages analysis, and even draft decision-making. What does that mean for a dispute resolution system whose legitimacy rests on party autonomy, due process, and reasoned decisions? Speakers from institutions, legal technology, expert practice, and the counsel side will map how AI is actually being used, how arbitrators perceive it, and how arbitral institutions are responding.

Reception
Janite Lee Reading Room | 3:00 – 4:00 pm