The sophistication of our legal system is making Australia an effective test market for international footprint litigation that sets a precedent for the rest of the world. And there’s a similar trend with international arbitration.
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What we’re seeing in Australia is that there is an increasing tendency for multi nationals who have operations in our jurisdiction to use Australia as a testing ground for international footprint dispute resolution. The reason that they do that is principally because they get certainty of outcome, they get a judicial system which is respected and which has precedent value around the world. They also come to this jurisdiction because they know that they’re going to get great service from the lawyers who work in this market. So that international footprint litigation is a trend that we’re seeing more and more of. It’s partly caught up in the globalisation of the world economy, unquestionably, but it’s also partly because what you’re seeing around the world is that litigation is becoming and in particular, litigation, rather than dispute resolution through other mechanisms is becoming increasingly expensive and difficult in other jurisdictions. Here rules of Court are very much streamlined compared to other parts of the world. The nature of the discovery process is very much streamlined in comparison to other parts of the world. So we don’t have that proliferation of ESI that you see, in particular, in the US. We don’t have to worry too much about the impact of international treaties which is what you get if you litigate in the United Kingdom. So it’s a good place to come to get international footprint issues resolved for all of those reasons but also because the reality is that you’re dealing with a very sophisticated market and the sophisticated market is in terms of the legal practitioners, the judicial system and also the consumers. So the marketplace is one which is quite sophisticated as well.
So that’s a trend, it’s going to continue to be a trend and I think that we’ll see Australia increasingly seen as a place to come to for alternate dispute resolution for general commercial litigation and also for increasingly for international arbitration work.
The international arbitration work will come to us partly because we’ve got a big push at the moment through the Commonwealth Government with centres such as ACICA. There’s been a steady growth in the number of matters that are being arbitrated under ACICA’s auspices here in Sydney and that will continue to be a trend as well. What we’re also seeing and what we’re actually doing as part of our response to assist our clients who are moving into Asia and other parts of the world as the economy becomes truly globalised is we’re ensuring that we embed, for example, into contracts dispute resolution provisions which see matters come back to this jurisdiction to be resolved and in the importance of that is that you get all of those things that I’ve spoken about but you also get the certainty of the rule of law which is something that you may not get in other jurisdictions overseas. So, for example, in China you don’t have the same sort of system, you don’t get the same certainty that you get here. In India, whilst it’s based on the common law, the reality is that you can spend 13/14 years in the Courts. Here the same sort of dispute 13/14 months. So the commercial driver is very important and we make sure we keep an eye out for our clients to ensure that we’re doing what we need to do to help them as they expand into those markets.
