Presentation to the Singapore Institute of Arbitrators, 30 September 2019
Alastair Henderson, Herbert Smith Freehills LLP, Singapore
Mr President Dinesh Dhillon, Vice-President Tay Yu-Jin, Mr Secretary Francis Goh, distinguished SIArb members, ladies and gentlemen, friends.
 |
 |
It is an honour and a pleasure to speak at the Annual General Meeting of the Singapore Institute of Arbitrators. This is my 11th membership year but your 38th AGM, because I learn from your website that SIArb was established in 1981. What a forward-looking step that was. Thirty eight years ago, Singapore was not a hotbed of arbitration activity. No International Arbitration Act, not even a modern Arbitration Act: the law was still based on Ordinance No. 14 of 1953. UNCITRAL's Model Law would not appear until 1985, SIAC was not set up until 1991. Singapore students weren't taught about arbitration, most practitioners never encountered it. There was no Redfern & Hunter to guide practice, no Mustill & Boyd. So those were early days indeed to decide that Singapore needed an Institute of Arbitrators. Of course there was some arbitration practice here in 1981, but still it was a big step. We should admire the foresight of the architects of the SIArb and it is a privilege for me to contribute to their vision this afternoon.
I've already started to introduce my theme: arbitration in Singapore, past, present and future. Looking Into the Crystal Ball: Arbitration in Singapore 2039. Which may prompt you to ask: who does Alastair Henderson think he is? What gives him any standing to talk about Singapore arbitration past or future? Let me say at once that I don't claim special insight. I know as much as you – or as little as everyone – about where we'll be in 20 years. But it's interesting to speculate and there are some thoughts we can take away. As far as the twenty year timeframe is concerned, there's no greater reason than that I arrived in Singapore in August 1999, twenty years ago give or take a few weeks, and that seemed to give some symmetry: twenty years back, twenty years forward. You'll have to forgive me for making this all about me!
I should warn you that I don't claim to have answers, only ideas. I can speculate about the future course of arbitration in Singapore and more widely, but I do so only to prompt discussion and debate, and – perhaps – to suggest some areas worth attention. Fortunately, there's every chance that I won't be around in twenty years to be held to account for what I say today.
Let's start with a brief review of where things stood twenty years ago, in terms of Singapore's place on the arbitration scene. People had been busy since the SIArb was set up in 1981. By 1999 there were new arbitration laws, domestic and international. SIAC had been thriving for 8 years. Singapore's law firms were developing their experience of conducting arbitration cases, and international firms were deciding that Singapore's emerging reputation for dispute resolution justified opening an office. The Government had decided that Singapore should boost its status as a dispute resolution hub; that programme was developing nicely.
But let's not get carried away: the arbitration scene in 1999 was still a long way from where we stand today. Yes, SIAC existed, and in 1999 it took on 89 new cases. But it was different animal from the sleek, muscular, ambitious Centre that we see today. It was still in a corner of the City Hall Building, and in my memory of visiting their office it was – shall we say – hushed and unhurried. No Maxwell Chambers, no International Commercial Court, no SIMC, in fact only just the SMC which was established in August 1997. No CIArb Singapore, no ICC case management team, no London barristers chambers, few international cases seated in Singapore and no investment arbitration cases even on the radar. We didn't even have a source of industry gossip to sustain us: no Global Arbitration Review, no Asia Pacific Legal 500, no Chambers Asia directory. As I recall, we had to rely for Singapore legal gossip on a website called Ice-red.com.
It's amazing how much has changed since then. One way to measure the scale of change is by looking at SIAC's case numbering. My first SIAC case in 1999 involved a performing arts project in China (a gala performance of the opera Turandot at the Forbidden City in Beijing). That case was filed at the SIAC on 22 October 1999 and it was allocated case number 75 of 1999. Case no. 75 on 22 October – this year, case number 75 was reached on 1 February. That gives you a concrete measure of how far and how fast the Singapore arbitration market has developed over the last two decades.
In January 2000 the Executive Director of the SIAC wrote an article called SIAC: Arbitration in the New Millennium. He laid out his vision of SIAC's mission in the new century, but reading it now it seems strangely timid and unambitious when we know how far things have actually developed. "It is the Centre’s vision [he said] to widen its domestic arbitration activities and build up broad-based local arbitration expertise. SIAC is working with the Law Society to build up a credible and diversified source of local arbitrators. SIAC hopes to build up a flourishing local arbitration community in the new millennium". All rather local; even parochial.
Well, hello 2019 – and aren't we way past merely building a flourishing local community. The Queen Mary / University of London arbitration survey ranks the SIAC as the most preferred arbitration venue in Asia, third most favoured in the world. The Academy of Law has reported similar findings. The ICC has a full case management team here, Maxwell Chambers is full of international hearings and Maxwell Chambers Suites is full of international dispute resolution organisations. There are more than one hundred international law firms in Singapore and barely a day goes by without visiting QCs and experts and international arbitrators. The Court of Appeal delivers judgments on arbitration matters which attract respect across the globe. There have been Singaporeans in senior positions with CIArb, ICCA, ICC, UNCITRAL's arbitration working groups and so forth. So, global relevance and an astonishing transformation.
But the pace of change and innovation is constantly accelerating. If we have advanced so far and fast in the last 20 years, where might we be in 20 years' time? These decades will undoubtedly see change at least as dramatic, at least as transformational as the years since 1999; or more so. My question is how this will affect us, the arbitration community in Singapore, and how will accelerating change and technological development affect Singapore as a global hub for dispute resolution?
The President of the SIAC Court of Arbitration, Mr Gary Born, is fond of saying that "Winter is Coming". He sounds a warning about challenges that lie ahead of us. Actually he is talking mainly about the need for arbitration to assert its legitimacy against a growing band of critics who would tear down the framework as we know it, particularly for investment arbitration. He's right that there is noisy opposition and he's right to call us to arms, but nonetheless I'm a bit more confident, at least for commercial arbitration. I don't think we're facing an existential threat; arbitration's days are not numbered. In fact I'll explain in a minute that I see arbitration – at least as a process, if not as a business – having a big future.
Still, we should reflect for a moment on the keynote address by Chief Justice Menon to the ICCA Congress in Singapore in 2012, where he declared that "this is the golden age of arbitration". Quite right, Singapore in particular does appear to be in a golden age of arbitral eminence, even dominance in its region, with a happy combination of talent and resources and business and global recognition. Long may that continue.
But I wonder if the Chief Justice was also sounding a warning? The concept of a golden age comes from Greek mythology, where it refers to the best age of man, a time of purity and prosperity, an era of heightened intellectual and material achievement. The golden age is the best of times, but it is also only the first of the ages of man, marked by subsequent decline from the golden age to the ages of silver, then bronze, through the heroic age of the Trojan wars and finally the iron age. So it's a tale of decline from a state of grace. If this is indeed Singapore's golden age of arbitration, what was the Chief Justice saying about the path ahead? Should the members of SIArb be worried? What – to get to the point – does the future hold?
Let's begin with three easy predictions.
First, I am confident in saying that there will continue to be disputes. Big disputes. Alexis Mourre, President of the ICC Court of Arbitration, spoke two weeks ago in Singapore about the sustained and increasing number, size and complexity of international arbitrations. I see no reason for that to change. The continued growth of international trade and investment, the demand for energy, the demand for infrastructure, the complexity of finance, the uncertainty of national laws and politics, the prevalence of risk, these constants mean that there is (in my view) no realistic prospect of a decline in commercial disputes. Or to put it another way: plenty of red meat still coming to our table.
My second confident prediction is that arbitration will continue to be a primary choice of process for resolving international business disputes. Maybe not the main or dominant form of international commercial dispute resolution, if it ever really was: I think there's every possibility that international commercial courts – SICC eminent among them – will become a larger player, and I greatly hope that we will also see growth in the use of mediation, encouraged by the new Singapore Convention. More on that in a moment. But despite those alternatives, I don't see arbitration losing its status as a leading choice for resolving commercial disputes.
My third confident prediction is that Singapore will remain a major global seat for international dispute resolution for years to come. Singapore's unique status, its geography, its position at heart of ASEAN and at the hub of world trade lines, the available resources, the political support for retaining global status for dispute resolution: these factors won't change. I do foresee that China will emerge as a global hub of equal stature (in 2018, the BAC accepted 4,872 arbitrations, an increase of 1,322 cases over previous year) and probably Singapore will have to concede part of the China pie, but I expect that Singapore and China will be the dominant centres of arbitration/dispute resolution in Asia for years to come. I can't be so completely confident about HK, though I greatly hope that it maintains its current status. Not so much the current short-term challenges, but longer term uncertainty about the Basic Law and pressures around political alignment may well become a drag on its status as an arbitral hub. Maybe we'll see a growing caseload at KCAB and JCAA, and of course there's the ICC which goes from strength to strength. But still I don't see Singapore's star fading. If anything, I expect to see Singapore take a larger share (or at least, the premium share) of work that is currently being handled by local and regional centres – BANI, TAI, VIAC and so on – given the uncertainties of their laws, the relative challenges and complexities of their procedures, and the fact that as the world gets smaller and more connected, major disputes seem likely to coalesce around a smaller number of global hubs, working to Singapore's advantage. p>
So, plenty of large disputes; arbitration still be a major choice; and Singapore still be a global hub. The Golden Age endures and winter is not coming. Right?
Maybe.
But I want to suggest that the skies are not all sunny. Clouds on the horizon could yet rain on our parade. I'd like to suggest three challenges: first, the short to medium term challenge of maintaining Singapore's attraction as a global hub against the competition; secondly, the medium term challenge that technology presents to all who specialise in arbitration in Singapore; and thirdly … well, nothing less than the complete transformation of arbitration as we know it. Again, I'm not claiming magical foresight or inside knowledge of the future. You may have better ideas, but at least I hope to prompt a discussion.
My first point is this: arbitration is no longer a noble and clubby profession, it is a competitive international business undertaken by many people across the world for profit and prestige. And the competition doesn't stands still. Every day, other centres and institutions are hatching plans to increase their market status and share, including an envious look at business opportunities in Southeast Asia. I use that word "business" advisedly, because arbitration is a business as much as a disputes procedure. More than that, it's a competitive cut-throat international business between institutions, law firms and other service providers who have resources and determination to compete fiercely. So, standing still is the surest way to go backwards. Here is a quote from an internet article with the subtle title: "Complacency: Just because things are going well now, doesn't mean they can't suddenly go horribly wrong". It resonates for arbitration in Singapore in 2019. "Once a company is secure in its industry with good market share, profitability and growth it can become complacent, resting on its laurels and secure in the knowledge that its closest competitors are trailing far behind. Many business giants of the 20th Century never made it to the 21st. Secure in their Strengths, they overlooked the Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats in their environment. Their complacency led them to stay in their comfort zone long enough for their competitors to catch and overwhelm them."
Ladies and gentlemen, we are good but we are not great. Self-awareness is a strength, so let's admit that Singapore is a global hub for arbitration but not yet the global hub for arbitration. Singapore has an outstanding portfolio of cases but in global terms it is not yet seen by all as the natural place for the biggest, the most complex, the highest profile, the most extraordinary arbitrations coming into the market. We have highly talented arbitration lawyers, Singaporean and others, but not yet enough outstanding specialists with deep understanding of arbitration as more than an extension of court procedure (though I want to pay tribute to the work of the SIArb in training new generations.) Who will be the next generation of Singaporeans to have global recognition as international leaders in this field? Even SIAC, which is an institution that all Singaporeans can be justly proud of, even SIAC for all its undoubted success, could still do better.
I make these observations as a strong supporter of Singapore, a permanent resident and a long-term member of your community. Someone who hopes to stay – if you'll have me – for the rest of my career. I say these things because complacency is the surest road to decline whereas objectivity is the best basis for change. We should be ready to acknowledge these things because we share the ambition of sustaining Singapore's pre-eminence. Our challenge is to see ourselves for what we are; know what to celebrate and what to change; and reinvent arbitral practice here constantly to stay ahead of the pack.
In no particular order, this is a selection of ideas for opportunities to differentiate Singapore on arbitration's world stage. You'll have your own views, you may think we should have different priorities, but it's a place to start.
- First and uncontroversially, Singapore must continue to do what it already does so well – but do it even better. Ladies and gentlemen, good is not good enough; "good enough" breeds complacency. Singapore has yet to achieve its greatest potential as an arbitration and dispute resolution hub but there's no reason why we cannot do amazing things. The goal cannot only be to stand confidently alongside London, Paris and the rest. We need clear blue water between the users' experience of arbitration in Singapore and that of any other centre. SIAC, in particular, should be relentless and uncompromising in being uniquely outstanding, in running arbitrations better than anyone else, anywhere else. Given the imagination and resolve which has marked SIAC's journey so far, I'm confident that it will continue to perfect the excellence of its work until the 'Singapore experience' is uniquely the world's best.
- Which leads me to say that there is merit in focussing on the main game and not getting distracted. Singapore is a global centre for commercial arbitration, which makes sense: it's the best and biggest part of the global arbitration business. On the other hand, I predict that Investment arbitration as we currently know it will be dead within the next ten years. There is scope for procedural innovation in Singapore's approach to commercial arbitration; respectfully, that is where I would focus most attention.
- I predict (and certainly I hope) that we will see greater diversity in all aspects of arbitration, most particularly on Tribunals. Gender diversity, but also diversity of race and nationality. Presently, Vietnamese or Thai or Indonesian or Burmese parties undertaking arbitration in Singapore have an extremely restricted choice of experienced national arbitrators, compared to (say) Australian or English parties. That's bound affect their confidence in the process and to give an impression (rightly or not) of inequality of choice. That can't be right. Tribunal diversity is certainly a challenge, but it's also a great opportunity for Singapore to differentiate itself really significantly in the years ahead. It will need imaginative expansion of the Singapore-led programmes already in existence to build capacity in other countries, and I pay tribute to SIArb's sustained efforts in this area.
To recap, the first thing I see in my crystal ball is the short to medium term challenge of maintaining Singapore's status as a leading arbitration hub against the competition; how to ensure that we are best in class, how to consolidate or secure a pre-eminent global position. I don't think it's impossible, I've suggested some possibilities; but it will take determination and creativity to achieve the potential. It's an amazing opportunity; it's also necessary for survival.
The second future challenge is a medium term issue that's already attracting a lot of attention in arbitration as in every part of life. This is the impact of new technology on practice as we know it.
Fair enough, this is not a new insight. Nor is new technology a new challenge. Twenty years ago we would have been excited about email, videoconferencing and file transfer on floppy disks. Ten years ago we were realising the power of electronic document management solutions. These days you can hardly escape discussions about how business will be revolutionised by new technology, and arbitration is just as vulnerable to change and obsolescence as any other field.
But much of that discussion focusses on how technology can improve our existing way of doing things. Document management solutions, document and data analysis, online case administration and so forth: ultimately, these are all about helping us to carry on existing practice in a better way. Today I want to talk about something slightly different: the implications of new technology for the business of arbitration in Singapore, as opposed to the practice. In particular, the implications of new technology for Singapore as a global hub for arbitration services.
We can approach this by looking at the implications of one particular kind of technology. Specifically, augmented reality, virtual meetings, holographic conferencing, call it what you will. This is the technology that makes it viable for a group of people to interact together in real time in a virtual meeting room from wherever in the world those people might be physically located.
The technology is already there but it's not yet good enough to pose a serious threat to in-person meetings. It's not reliable enough, it's not immersive enough, it's too expensive. But that's just a matter of time, there is little doubt that these are short-term obstacles. Within a surprisingly short amount of time, it's likely that we will be able to enter virtual meetings that look, sound and feel just like the real thing, and at manageable cost. The technology will be able to sustain intense, prolonged, interactive, intellectual and intuitive discussions between multiple participants – or, as you might call it for today's purposes, an arbitration hearing.
Here's an extract from an online article by Dr Ivan Misner: "One of the current missing elements of a video discussion is the lack of intimacy with the online communication. However, as this technology advances, people will be better able to read non-verbal language like crossed arms, leaning in, signs of nervousness, or other non-verbal cues that can be missed in a two-dimensional discussion. People attach value to the feeling of physically sharing space with another person. The more technology enables that feeling to mirror reality, the more effective it will be, because as science has shown, the brain is often unable to determine what is real and what is not as it relates to virtual reality".
If the technology becomes good enough – and I mean, when the technology becomes good enough – there may be very little reason to assemble everyone in one place for a hearing. The Tribunal, counsel, witnesses, parties, experts and all the rest of the circus can attend a virtual hearing from wherever in the world they choose. If by then the technology captures nuance and emotion and non-verbal cues as effectively as face to face meetings; and as electronic hearing bundles and document management systems are already replacing old-school paper files; then why (one might ask) will we ever need to meet – physically – again?
That would have immediate consequences. Arbitration brings a lot of people and business and money to Singapore's airlines and hotels and service providers. Hearings act as a focal point for Singapore's status as an arbitration hub. It's no accident that there's been heavy investment in Maxwell Chambers as a hearing venue. But what if all that business disappeared into a virtual universe: arbitration itself would go on, but from where? Maybe not here. This could be a world where Maxwell Chambers becomes obsolete within a decade or two of its expansion.
So far, so interesting in the limited context of arbitration hearings, but you can take the point much further. When technology gets to a point where we can attend an arbitration hearing without actually being there, without even being in the same city or country or continent, the same would be true for meetings of all kinds. I could decide to establish a specialist international arbitration practice in Bali or Barcelona, attending meetings with clients and witnesses all over the world from my home office. Would businesses even need offices as we know them today, if all the staff can interact by virtual presence from anywhere. Is this the future of professional services, where a law firm will be a disaggregated collective of people interacting from home or wherever they like, with no central office?
I'm straying beyond my brief, and people much smarter than me are thinking about the future of work, including in Singapore. Confining myself to arbitration, is this future realistic? It certainly feels plausible, I can't see why it wouldn't be, time zone issues aside. It's just one example of the possible impact of new technology, but it illustrates very well how that impact may go far beyond simply helping us to carry on our current business more efficiently. It may turn current practice inside out or render it obsolete. My point is that we should be thinking far beyond the limited horizons of better document management systems, data analytics and presentation tools. We should be examining the fundamentals of how we carry on business as arbitration service providers. Disruptive new technology is an opportunity but also a serious challenge to Singapore's golden age. I have no doubt that our current arbitration business model will not be fit for purpose in twenty years.
There's an important additional point before I move on. I'm talking here about the implications of new technology for arbitration as a business and a sector of Singapore's economy, not the impact on arbitral procedure and practice. Wherever in the world we may find the people conducting arbitrations, the case will still be strong for seating arbitrations in Singapore, in the legal sense. There will still be neutral, independent, expert courts to support and enforce arbitration, we will still have a modern law and an excellent institution offering best in class case management. And we will have the technological skills to support and sustain the complex new infrastructure. So the statistics may still show great popularity for Singapore as a seat. The issue is who will do that work, and where. The second challenge that I see in my crystal ball is therefore how to keep the business here when disruptive technology may push towards disaggregation and dispersal across the globe. I am sure there are answers, in particular the attraction of a physical cluster of excellence across all aspects of arbitration will still be powerful, but people who rest on their laurels will certainly be left behind. Mr President, perhaps SIArb may be well-placed to lead a discussion about how the Singapore arbitration community responds to these challenges.
Let's peer even further into the future. My third thought for Singapore arbitration in 2039 moves past the opportunities of technology to the new frontiers of artificial intelligence (AI). This is where it gets a bit sci-fi, a bit future-world – except that it isn't that at all, it's real and coming to a city near you.
The impact of AI on dispute resolution has received a lot of attention. In particular (for my purposes), people discuss whether artificial intelligence will take over the fact-finding, legal analysis and decision-making from arbitrators, to deliver a decision that is at least as reliable or possibly more so than a human counterpart, based on more rigorous analytical methodology.
The debate is split between those for whom the end of our world is nigh, and those who say that AI can never replace the human and intuitive element in decision-making. In the short term I have no doubt that the latter are correct, we aren't close to replacing humans with machines. But will that day come?
Imagine a platform that has been populated with all the laws, regulations, cases and legal texts from your jurisdiction or multiple jurisdictions. If you ask a legal question based on a given set of facts – my neighbour's tree is overhanging my land and blocking the light to my window – it will give you a complete legal answer in seconds including all relevant legal citations. Moreover, the system will refine and improve its analysis over time, case by case. It's the ideal legal associate, some might say: none of that millennial wispiness! But I think you know that you don't need to imagine it at all, it's available now and best-known as a system called ROSS which runs on IBM's Watson platform. It analyses the facts of the case and trawls through all of its stored legal authorities to identify those most closely analogous to your particular situation, from which it produces structured output to support the strongest possible legal arguments for the case in hand. And it learns from feedback to refine and perfect its approach over time. Ponder this: ROSS is said to sift through more than one billion text documents per second.
Now imagine that you have alongside ROSS a document management system that is better than any product currently on the market. It takes in every file and record you give it, it orders the material and analyses it by word and topic and by intelligent evaluation, both individually and relationally to other records. It creates an instant, comprehensive, faultless timeline of events that are relevant to any given topic and it is capable of analysing to a high degree of probability the cause-and-effect impact of single and multiple events. "Show me the cause and consequences of the fan blade failure in Turbine 3". "Was the fire caused by the owner's gross negligence according to the standards of that industry?". And so on. We're not there yet but we may not be so far off either.
Next, let's add human evidence into the system. You could use a combination of voice recognition technology to capture words, overlaid with inputs to capture all the non-verbal factors that influence credibility: electrical activity across the skin, muscle twitches and eye movements, tremors in the voice, even the physical positioning of the witness. It would be clunky and expensive at the moment, but that's a matter of time, not basic feasibility.
You can see where I'm going. Put that all together and you would be closing in on a system that satisfactorily performs the functions of an arbitrator. Michael MacIlwraith of GE speculates that one day we may be able to select from a range of AI arbitrators, each fine-tuned to replicate the approach of a particular type of human decision-maker. A black-letter lawyer AI arbitrator; an AI engineer from a civil law background; an AI arbitrator who favours equities over strict law; and so forth. Why is that implausible, actually?
In December last year, Francisco Uríbarri Soares from the law firm FRORIEP wrote this about artificial arbitrators: "The greatest disadvantage is the lack of emotional sensitivity and perception which, from a neurobiological standpoint, is instrumental to efficient decision making and tasks entrusted to arbitrators. Emotions are inextricably linked to information, motivation, processing, memory and judgment, the lack of which impedes the adoption of machine arbitrators". In other words, AI arbitrators just won't have the emotional capacity and nimbleness to replace arbitrators as effective decision-makers.
On the other hand, Thomas Snider and Sergejs Dilevka of the Al-Tamimi law firm have written: "AI will become an assistant to arbitrators and, in some cases, even an arbitrator possessing vital qualities for human arbitrators as being relentless, consistent, systematic, impartial; and it will continue to improve and grow to be powerful. Yet, there exists some scepticism towards an idea of assisting an arbitrator with AI, and even more – replacing a human arbitrator with AI. To shift thinking in line with technological development, one should consider this: airplanes are being landed using autopilot; cars are being driven autonomously. If humans entrust their lives to machines/computers, why should not AI take care of, perhaps, less important matters like settling arbitration disputes?"
Putting psychology and emotion to one side, let's talk money and consumer choice. If you are the general counsel for a company facing a large commercial dispute, with a choice between the traditional arbitration route over the next two years and a million dollars in costs, or an AI platform that will ingest, review and analyse all the relevant details in mere moments, calculate outcomes by algorithms and probabilities, and spit out a reasoned decision with – say – a 90% degree of confidence, all in a fraction of the time and cost of the traditional alternative; which would you choose? I feel that the human need for emotional engagement in the process is going to take second place to commercial reality, driving us towards AI arbitration whether or not we like it.
Let's come back down to the realities of arbitration in Singapore in 2019, and peer again nervously – or optimistically – into the crystal ball for twenty years hence. As I've said, I am confident that there will still be plenty of disputes: complex and high value. I'm confident that arbitration will remain a dominant procedure for resolving those disputes, and that Singapore will remain a major global hub for those cases.
The Golden Age continues then, for now at least. But the disruptive force of new technology and artificial intelligence is already starting to engage with arbitration in ways that will be unlike anything we have experienced so far. In twenty years they will have transformed our business. You may say that it's easy to paint an apocalyptic vision and that there will always be a role for good professionals – and you're right. But it's easy to be complacent. The way we respond – individually and as an arbitration community – will define the state of the arbitration market in Singapore in 2039, probably sooner than that.
I will leave you with a comment that I heard a few weeks ago, which resonated with me powerfully: that the successful law firm of the future will not be a law firm at all, it will be a technology firm that specialises in providing legal services.
Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for listening patiently. I will be glad to answer your questions, but I will be even happier to hear your own predictions for the road ahead.
Click HERE to view more photos.