While the most successful way to impress your arbitrator is with the merits of your case, there are smaller, but important, ways to create a favorable impression of yourself and your client’s case. Below is one arbitrator’s guide to creating an arbitral environment favorable to you and your client. These tips are presented with the important caveat that they represent only one person’s list, based on 30 years of judging and arbitration.
1. Do not email your adversary with negative, insulting and arguably inflammatory comments about counsel and your opponent’s case, and send copies of these emails to the arbitrator. While arbitrators likely know that communications between counsel may take on a different tone than communications shared with the arbitrator or comments made in the hearing room, sending such emails to the arbitrator will create a very definite impression of counsel in his or her mind. Sharing communications with the arbitrator is not likely to sway the arbitrator to the correctness of the author’s position more effectively than a carefully crafted, non-confrontational explanation of the client’s position.
Originally published on Law.com on October 22, 2014.
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