International Arbitration: top trends in 2024

Freshfields has launched International arbitration: top trends in 2024. Our annual report, compiled by international arbitration specialists from across the world, explores the evolving and emerging trends influencing the international arbitration landscape. 

The report places the spotlight on several overarching themes affecting international arbitration, including energy transition goals, ESG issues and geopolitical and economic instability, acting as catalysts for disputes across many sectors. 

Risks and opportunities associated with recent developments in the practice of international arbitration are also explored, including artificial intelligence, arbitration law reform and recent arbitration-related court decisions.

The trends included in this year’s report are as follows:

• Generative AI: opportunities and risks in arbitration. AI is already used in many parts of arbitration practice, including in managing and reviewing large batches of documents and preparing chronologies. How is the sudden rise of more advanced forms of AI, such as generative AI and large language models, affecting arbitration? 
• Arbitration in times of crisis: conflict, sanctions, climate. Geopolitical crises, global warming, economic strife, and the regulatory and economic measures taken in response, will see companies seek damages using direct investor-State claims and political risk insurance and face climate change-related disputes. Sanctions could add layers of parallel proceedings, requiring risk and liability mitigation strategies.
• Energy transition: critical minerals industry challenges.  Soaring demand for minerals key to the energy transition will increasingly generate ESG challenges, with related energy and mining disputes often likely to go to arbitration. 
• Arbitration Act 1996 reforms: ensuring London remains a leading seat for international arbitration. Expected to make its way onto the statute book in 2024, the Arbitration Bill is likely to enhance the UK’s standing as a leading destination for international arbitration.
• The EU’s campaign to end intra-EU investor-State arbitration: pushing investor creativity. All intra-EU bilateral investment treaties have now been terminated, which, combined with EU withdrawal from the Energy Charter Treaty, could have significant implications for investor-State arbitration in Europe.
• India: a new era for international arbitration? Some recent court decisions offer reason for cautious optimism regarding India’s arbitration ecosystem. As the landscape continues to evolve, how should investors plan their dispute resolution strategies?
• The evolving landscape of arbitrator conflicts and disclosure requirements. The new UNCITRAL Code of Conduct and revised IBA Guidelines on conflicts of interest will put arbitrator independence and impartiality increasingly in the spotlight.
• Construction and environmental disputes from oil and gas decommissioning. A wave of decommissioning-related disputes seems inevitable, testing substantive issues of construction and environmental law, as well as existing dispute resolution mechanisms in standard forms of contracts.
• Public international law’s growing relevance for businesses. Economic uncertainty, supply chain disruption and geopolitical tensions make public international law increasingly relevant in transactions involving State-owned entities, boundary disputes affecting natural resources, corporate human rights claims and the development of ESG standards. 
• Clarity or confusion? The implications of domestic court rulings for arbitration. How will national court decisions across Europe and the US concerning anti-suit injunctions, challenges to awards, corruption and sovereign immunity around enforcement against State assets shape dispute resolution strategies?
• Is your life sciences contract susceptible to renegotiation or termination if the economics of the deal changes? Inflation and the increased cost of capital are driving continued high numbers of life sciences arbitrations. 

Please reach out to me, or any of the authors of the trends, to discuss how any of these issues might affect you and your business.

Our report is also available in Spanish and a Portuguese version will be available on the website shortly.