Ten years ago, it would have been easy to imagine the following scenario.
A foreign company brings a high-stakes international arbitration against a U.S. company. The U.S. company turns to its star U.S. litigator to handle the matter. Although he has never handled an international arbitration before, the star U.S. litigator has an unparalleled track record of winning bet-the-company cases in state and federal courts around the country. His performance in domestic arbitration is equally superb. Not only that, the star U.S. litigator and his team know the client and its business inside out. “Why go elsewhere?” the U.S. company’s general counsel asks his staff, as he picks up the phone to call the star U.S. litigator. To the general counsel, an international arbitration is simply another form of litigation — just handled in a different forum with a different set of procedural rules.