Cross Cultural Training

Comparative tecniques of obtaining oral evidence in International arbitration

Dis and the international advocacy academy organized jointly in Berlin a seminar about this topic. It was very interesting and in my opinion each and every arbitration conference should always include practical seminars and discussions in small groups. In this seminar we had the opportunity to see how some brilliant barristers (Richard Samuel, Collin Edelman and Bernard Richmmond) and some of the most prominent German arbitrators such as Richard Kreindler, Wolfgang Kuehn and Rolf Trittman in action. The German arbitrators conduct traditionally arbitrations proceedings in a centralized and efficient way: the witnesses are questioned by the Tribunal first and only subsequently by the counsels, which is significantly different from cross examination. As an important note it was referred that in multicultural environments transparency is a very important issue and that arbitrators should consult the parties on evidentiary issues and address these issues as early as possib

le, so each counsel knows at an early stage the rules of the game (article 2 IBA rules on the taking of evidence in International arbitration).