17 December 2020
Questions:
How would you describe yourself in three words?
French but nice.
How did you first get involved in arbitration work?
I was a newly qualified French lawyer in London and got a job in the arbitration group of Shearman & Sterling as they needed French speakers for a case. It was supposed to be a short mission but ended up with me joining the arbitration group permanently, qualifying as a solicitor in England & Wales, and staying with them for over 5 years. This was almost 15 years ago and, since then, my work has been exclusively focused on arbitration.
In the course of your work, do you notice a trend in clients preferring arbitration over litigation as a form of dispute resolution?
Certainly, and this has been a steady trend for the last two decades at least. More and more cases are being referred to arbitration, including larger and more complex disputes. Arbitral institutions have also published statistics that speak for themselves and show a yearly increase in the number of administered cases throughout the world.
However, there has been a recent strengthening of litigation and mediation with the introduction of conventions for the cross-border enforcement of court judgments and mediated settlement agreements. These include the Hague Convention on Choice of Court Agreements, the Hague Judgments Convention, and the Singapore Mediation Convention. These new trends should keep arbitration practitioners on their toes and push us to continue to adapt and improve.
What is the most memorable arbitration or arbitration related matter that you were involved in, and why?
Every arbitrator remembers their very first case sitting as arbitrator. I was very excited about mine and worked hard on it all along. However, the parties settled on the first day of the evidentiary hearing! It was certainly a good outcome for the parties, but, for a first case, it was also a bit frustrating for me!
In addition, when I was still quite new to Singapore and I had just started to work at The Arbitration Chambers, I served as tribunal secretary to several tribunals of which CJ Chan Sek Keong was a member. It was a privilege to work with him and to learn from him.
What advice do you have for a young fellow practitioner interested in arbitration work?
There is no such thing as glamourous growth. Young practitioners need to work hard and excel at their job, and they need to be resilient. That being said, they also need to get out of the office, meet people, attend arbitration conferences and seminars and make a name for themselves.
It is also very important to find a good mentor, someone who will challenge you and inspire you.
What are the challenges you think arbitration practitioners will face in the upcoming years?
With the current pandemic, the arbitration world is already facing challenges. However, these challenges are much smaller for us than for most industries, and we were certainly already well equipped to adapt to them. The very nature of our work involves working remotely with people throughout the world, using emails and electronic submissions, sharing documents on platforms, holding meetings by telephone conference, having participants join hearing by video conference etc. The only real new challenge is the scale upon which these tools are being used and will probably continue to be used for quite some time.
Another challenge that arbitration practitioners may face in the upcoming years is that while there may be a surge of cases due to the pandemic, there could be a lack of funds to finance them. As such, arbitration could be used as a threat rather than a dispute resolution tool.
With the establishment of the Singapore International Mediation Centre and the introduction of the SIAC-SIMC Arb-Med-Arb Protocol, do you see mediation as now having a bigger role to play in assisting parties to resolve their disputes?
Mediation has always played an important role in dispute resolution and will certainly develop even further with the Singapore Convention on Mediation. It may also be well adapted to the cases that are being brought by the current pandemic.
I also think that, in appropriate cases, arbitrators should not hesitate to provide parties with an opportunity to mediate and suspend an ongoing arbitration if there is a chance that the parties could settle. In some cases, parties could be better off financially with a mediated settlement agreement, which would also enable them to maintain their commercial relationship.
Who is the person(s) who has had the greatest impact and/or influence on your career?
I owe my resilience and tenacity to my paternal grandmother. She has always been my role model. I also would not be where I am today without my husband’s unwavering support throughout the years.
Professionally, I have had the pleasure to work with brilliant and supportive individuals who had a real impact on my career. In particular, I am thinking of Adrian Winstanley, Lawrence Boo and Ben Hughes.
If you were not in your current profession, what profession would you be in?
I would have loved to be a doctor.
What’s your guilty pleasure?
Would it be too cliché to say cheese?!
Otherwise, a glass of Suze with sparkling water and ice, served with some olives. Suze is a bitter drink my grandfather used to love.
What is one talent that not many people know you have?
I am not sure I was talented at it, but in a previous life I used to dance tango.
Fill in the blank:
“Arbitration is to Dispute Resolution as salt is to an icy road."