Ep #2: Robert Stephen, Registrar of DIAC

Welcome to Aiken asks, the Middle East disputes podcast co-hosted by me, Changeary. And by me, Graham Lovett. Shane and I co-lead Aiken's Middle East disputes practice. In this series, we host discussions with leading figures in the Middle East disputes community. In each segment, we speak with judges, institutional leaders and evident practitioners to hear their perspective on topics at the heart of Middle East disputes, including jurisdiction, enforcement and regional trends in dispute resolution. Our aim is to inform, entertain and to offer a bite-sized flavor of the issues on the top of our guests' minds and agendas. Now, to today's guests. Shane, our next guest as one of the busiest in-trace in the regional arbitration world, and remarkably still answers his emails. We're joined by Robert Steven, Registrar of the Dubai International Arbitration Centre, colloquially known as DEAC. As many of our listeners will know, Robert's had a front-row seat to one of the biggest institutional shakeups the region has seen. He was Registrar of the DRCLCAA before its consolidation into DEAC and he's been central to DEAC's modernization ever since. Both UN Robert have had a front-row seat to some of those developments, Graham. New rules, a new default seat, a new case load. Robert has effectively been rebuilding the aircraft while flying it. Absolutely right. Unlike the rest of us, he can't just blame the tribunal when something goes wrong. So, when it works, nobody notices and when it doesn't, everyone knows your name. A sanceless brief, if ever, there was one. And if anyone can tell us where regional arbitration is really heading, it's the person running the busiest room in the building. Robert, welcome to the podcast. Greetings to be here, thanks for having me, Graham and Jean. As part of our AC&R series, we ask our guests some initial quick fire questions to soften them up a bit. So no pressure at all here, Robert. Let's jump into the first one. Robert, I think I know the answer to this, but I'm going to try my luck anyway. Arbitration or litigation. If you had to pick one to resolve your own dispute, which one would it be and why? Arbitration. It has to be arbitration for all of the things that we sell it as an institution, but also as practitioners. Complete the sentence. The Middle East disputes market in 2030 will be bigger. What's one thing about your job that gets you out of bed in the morning? My team. If you weren't in the law, what would you be doing? Tending a farm somewhere in Tuscany. To buy arbitration week in three words. International. Intimate. And established. Jonathan Sumption once famously said that most of the law is common sense with bells and knobs on. What do you think about that? 100% correct. A bit too am I to argue with. You couldn't disagree with the Jonathan Sum. But you'd be very brave to answer it. And finally, Robert, let's put the great debate to rest once and for all. Is it Diac or Diac? Oh, it's Diac. 100%. Okay, we've seen very sure of that. That does put that one to bed. So that was a quick fire. Now let's get into the weeds. So the consolidation of DIC LCA was a seismic moment and one to which we were very close, obviously. But the benefit of hindsight, what went better than expected? And what was more difficult than expected? Inevitably, there was business disruption that impacted our users. Council arbitrators and ultimately be the institution. But I think four years on. It's fair to say that we have a very successful business today. And in a business that we can all be very proud of. Our board has been very focused on setting a solid foundation for that business. So we've invested tremendously in our people forming a world class arbitration court. That's headed up by very experienced president, Michael Pryles and very experienced vice president. We've recruited and we've retained talent and that's been important. We've made investments in technology and that's new systems. We've built a virtual academy and we've got a market leading case management system coming to market. So I think that's been kind of core to setting the foundation. The hard bit, I think, is probably been investing in the people. That's always hard. It takes time. It's often takes far longer than you would like to find the right people with the right experience, the right seniority to come into an organization like an arbitral institution. But it's also the most rewarding part of it. Because when you see a team to come together and you see the product of that, particularly for institutions that said earlier on, it's the lifeblood of the business and it's the key to our success. That was the hardest bit, but it's also been the most rewarding bit to see that team come together. Ultimately, if our people are trusted and provide a level of service that is better than our competition, that's ultimately going to sell the center more than any investment that we could do in marketing or business development. And I think the statistics, the data shows this. Our 25 results provide clear evidence that we're making progress. And of course, while statistics are important, what ultimately matters more is just what lies behind them. And I think that's the continued confidence that we're seeing from the market, from our users, from Council and the wider business community to entrust their disputes to us. And I think my sense is that people in the market have seen a change in DEAC. I use the word seismic in the question, but quite a seismic change, I think, in the way DEAC is operating and particularly how it's managing cases, which is what an institution is about. And interestingly, your answer didn't really include much reference to Decree 34. And that may be your answer. Do you think Decree 34 is still a live issue in the market? No, not regionally. And I think not in what I would consider to be our growth markets, so China, India and Russia. I think the strong foundation that we've set, the investments that we've made are all bearing fruit. And I think we are moving beyond Decree 34. And I think where we see our future growth, they've definitely moved beyond Decree 34. It's certainly something that comes up less and less in discussions that I'm having. But undoubtedly, if we were having this conversation with some lawyers sitting in North America or in Continental Europe or in London, I think there would be some people that would still have concerns about Decree 34. But I think it's getting less and less, and it's certainly less and less relevant for us here in Dubai and in the regional market. I think we'd echo that sentiment from a practitioner's standpoint, the dust feels like it's really settled, Robert, I agree with that. But reflecting on some other changes, the 2022 Diac rules or Diac rules rather, introduced significant changes, including the power to award costs, making DIC the default seat of arbitration, and indeed the introduction of exparte relief, which here at Akin, we call beloved amendment, giving Graham's heavy championing of that particular rule. That's one of my proudest moments, I can tell you. One to dine out on Graham. So, Robert, from your perspective, how have parties, tribunals and enforcing courts responded to all of those changes? The short answer is very positively, and we can see that in our statistics, because more and more people are actively choosing to buy our services, and I can put it that way. But we're also seeing it in terms of the uptake of the new products and services that were introduced and the regimes that were brought in with the 2022 rules. So, if you just take the emergency arbitrator regime that was introduced in 2022, for the first time, the centre didn't have that in the past. That's been extremely well used. It's obviously going to be a regime that's familiar with others that have experience of other institutional rules. For us, you can make an application for interim relief concurrently with your request for arbitration, but you can also do it before an arbitral tribunal is constituted. So, at any point in time after actually starting your case, the most notable feature of the process for us is actually the speed. We will seek to appoint an emergency arbitrator within one day of receiving the complaint, and that's pretty quick. There's very few institutional rules that will actually have such a tight deadline. What I can say from practice is that we have been able to do that in all cases. The other notable point about the use of the emergency arbitrator regime, if I can call it that, is that it's been remarkably consistent. What we've seen is consistently somewhere in the region of five applications a year since it's been introduced, and all of those five applications, the types of applications are very similar. The way the court has treated it has been remarkably similar, and the way the emergency arbitrators have behaved and the decisions that they've handed down has been remarkably consistent. I think that's given a lot of faith in that process and in that procedure that has been brought in. That's just one example of the uptake and how it has been used, and I think it's positive. When you launch a new set of rules, it's a big moment. There's a lot of work that goes into drafting them. There's a lot of work that goes into benchmarking against other institutions. But there is also a period of time where you don't know for sure how they're going to work in practice. And you only know that once you've started to use them. And so we're now four years into using these. And we're probably getting to the point where now we've got a nice neat list of things that we might want to tweak a little bit and look for a rule's revision. But nothing drastic, which is important. The rules really do reflect international best practice. There's been some minor shifts in terms of what we're seeing at other institutions and in their rules. And so maybe there's sort of new things that we might want to introduce. But the rules have been very well received and they're working very well. And I think probably fair to say, as you alluded to, there probably will be an update. I think, I mean, we call them the new rules, but they were issued in March 2022. And as you say, there's probably some things that people have seen that think they could probably be improved upon and there are other institutions that have issued rules. And predominantly, they seem to be focused on efficiency. The other are traditional institutional rules there. They're increasing efficiency and giving power to the tribune order to make more decisions without fear of being challenged by somebody. Exactly that. It's all driven by ultimately what our users want, which is a more efficient and effective process. And so anything that we do will be to improve the rules for that ultimate aim. And no institution wants to be in the business of reviewing its rules on a regular basis. You want to give them time to bed in. You want to give everyone time to use them. It's required for the institution, but it's also required for our users. And so inherently, this sort of thing happens around the five, six year mark. So we'll be looking at it probably next year, but the view to something coming in further down the line in maybe 28. Robert, you touched earlier on benchmarking against other institutions. So out of curiosity, how do you see direct positioning itself against the established global institutions and also against regional competitors if we can call them that? Yeah, that's a good question. Look, I think we're positioning the center as an international international institution of choice for the MiASA region today, rather than just this Dubai focused or this Middle East focused center. But we obviously have much bigger ambitions than we want to be considered to be a top five international international institution. We've very much focused on building global credibility. So our modern rules, we've just talked about our people, we've just talked about it in our infrastructure, showcasing all that's good about Dubai as a neutral and highly international business hub, the unique choice that you can have between a civil law system and a common law system, sophisticated courts that we have here, the strong infrastructure, and then also our regional scale and relevance. We can offer something that a London or a Paris or a Singapore-based institution can't, which is proximity to the projects, the state's linked entities, the construction infrastructure disputes, and the parties that are actually operating here. And I think that is key and that is important. Undoubtedly, we have strong competition from established and new entrants in the region, but I think our expertise, our accessibility, our efficiency, our international standards, that's what setting us apart from our regional competitors today. So we're competitive regionally, but I think we're increasingly competitive on an international playing field. And drawing that together then, what are the main say, what are the two biggest institutional developments the market should expect to see from DEAC over the next couple of years? Undoubtedly, further investment in technology. So I think they'll have to be further investment in technology and in AI, and that will be with both an internal focus and an external focus. I think we will be looking to make ourselves more efficient and effective internally. So we will be deploying AI on our systems to ensure that we are able to do more with less. Because the institution is growing, the case numbers are growing. You don't always want to be recruiting more and more people. And we don't need to do that. We've got a fantastic team as it is. So I think we can leverage technology to help us internally. But I think increasingly, there's also a need for us to offer AI, but in a closed environment, to our users and to our arbitrators to help them to resolve the disputes in a more effective way. And to a certain extent, level the playing field. Because in many cases, you've got very sophisticated law firm on one side with access to technology and AI, and able to provide that to their client. And then you've got a relatively unsavisticated counterparty and sophisticated counsel on the other side. So can we level the playing field a little bit? We obviously talked about a rules revision. But I think there'll have to be more business development, I think, from the center. And I think we need to be more confident about being seen and being out into the market. And we've got an awful lot of interest from, as I mentioned earlier on, I think three very important jurisdictions through China, India, and Russia. And I think we need to make investments in those jurisdictions and in others that we see is strategically important to the growth of the center. So a lot to do. We could spend a whole hour, I think, Robert talking about AI and the development in that space. I can imagine people's eyes rolling, is that hearing? Maybe that's one for season two. So, Robert, could you tell us a little bit about what role you expect direct to play during to buy arbitration week and beyond? So I think it's fair to say we've played an important role over the course of the last five years. We've supported the organizing committee with the administration of the week. So what we do is we provide an infrastructure to the organizing committee. And our events and marketing team and our finance team do a lot of work behind the scenes to ensure that the organizing committee has everything that it needs. And as the week develops, I think, ultimately, from an institutional perspective, we want to contribute more from a thought leadership perspective. So we are transitioning our kind of events that we've done into more flagship conferences and events. So this year, our conference will be a full day conference, a flagship event, rather than just a couple of panel sessions in an afternoon. We're going to be probably more strategic in terms of who we support and how we support them. So we will be supporting young practitioners, we'll be supporting groups and organizations that perhaps don't necessarily have the resources to be able to organize their own events. And so those will be things that are close to our hearts and our external commitments. So eco-representation commitments, greener arbitration commitments, young arbitrage commitments, racial equality commitments. So all of those commitments that we have made externally to other organizations or initiatives, we would essentially focus on supporting those primarily. We want to be at the heart of the bi-arbitration week. We think we already are, but I think it's maturing quite nicely. I think last year we had 185 events over the course of seven days with 1,700 registered delegates. And it's certainly one of the largest and most popular arbitration weeks on the calendar. And so it's only natural that DiAC plays an important and key role in that. But I think it's important, however, to ensure that it's not a DiAC thing. The success of the bi-arbitration week has always been that it is a community-led initiative first and foremost, rather than an institutional-led event. And I don't think there is an appetite for that to change. There's an appetite for us to play an important role, which we're currently doing. But it shouldn't be a DiAC thing. It successes its community initiative. - And actually, a nice segue into a shameless plug for the Akin event on the Tuesday, which you've kindly agreed to be a panelist for, which is all about the new DFC arbitration law. So that will be a very interesting one, I'm sure. So finally, what do you think, Robert, is the biggest change you've seen in the Middle East disputes market over the last five years? - The single biggest change over the course of the last five years is the transformation of the region into a hub for international arbitration. We've essentially seen over the course of the last five years the Middle East level up, move beyond simply participating in the process to actively shaping it, creating more reliable, more efficient, more attractive environments for international parties operating in the region. And we've seen that in lots of different ways. We've seen through the instruction of modern laws, largely aligning with the instrumental law, significantly enhancing the enforceability of arbitral awards, limiting judicial interference, providing parties with legal certainty. We've seen through the establishment of purpose builds and increasingly sophisticated centers. So obviously, directs gone through a transformation, but we've seen other institutions transform, we've seen institutions be developed from scratch. We've got refinements to our institutional rules, incorporating the modern procedures that we talked about earlier on, investment in talent in the region, and infrastructure that I think does compete very well with more established centres like London, Singapore and Paris. I think we've also seen it through the way the market has adopted to practices that have been designed to maximize efficiency, and cost effectiveness, so take, for example, technology and AI driven case management and virtual hearing protocols, you know, that's standard across the region. So I think that's probably been the single biggest change, and I think to buy in particular has been at the heart of that driving that, but we've seen an upward trend across the region. Well, thank you very much, Robert, that was a thought provoking and really interesting discussion. I guess we'll see during to buy arbitration week. Before we do.