Professor Park's Accidental Entry into International Arbitration (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: Professor Park, how did you begin your career in international arbitration? I know you started practicing as a banking and financial lawyer. The entry into arbitration was an accident. It all happened one hot Sunday afternoon when I was a young lawyer practicing in Paris. The senior partner of my law firm called me, perhaps because I was the only one silly enough to still be in Paris during the middle of August when everyone was on vacation. A client of his, who was from overseas, had just been sued in the south of France. And the client, the managers of which did not speak French, was worried that perhaps the local judge, who was a layman who was presiding over a commercial court, perhaps the local judge might be biased in favor of the claimant, who was from the same town as the local judge. So the senior partner said to me, get on the train overnight to Toulon and see what you can find out about the contract. After a little bit of tussle with the client's representative, the contract was presented, and at the very end there was a clause saying that all disputes would be resolved under the arbitration rules of the International Chamber of Commerce. This permitted us to go to the Cour d'Appel in Aix-en-Provence and to get an order which told the Tribunal de Commerce, the commercial court, to cease its proceedings. We transferred matters to arbitration, and things ended up in a very satisfactory fashion. What this event underscored was that for international transactions, the raison d'etre of arbitration lies not in speed or in low cost, although both are important, but rather the reason for arbitration lies in the possibility to enhance a relatively level playing field. And let me underscore the adverb relatively. No playing field is perfectly level, as anyone who's played sports will know. But some playing fields are less level than others. What international arbitration does is to provide an opportunity for the dispute to be resolved by a body which is chaired by someone who does not share the nationality of either side according to procedural rules that are internationally recognized and give neither side an undue advantage and in a language that is commonly understood. In so doing, one promotes the cross-border economic cooperation which is enhancing the welfare of peoples around the globe. And that is no small matter.