Roschier has published its sixth edition of Roschier Dispute Index 2021, investigating Nordic companies’ practises and trends in dispute resolution. Four points of interesting are the use of arbitration rules, ADR, digital tools, and diversity.
The survey shows that the use of arbitration by Danish companies has increased. All Nordic respondents show a high level of trust in their domestic arbitration institutional rules. This is also the case with Danish companies where 56% prefer the Rules of Danish Institute of Arbitration.
The use of ADR, for instance mediation, has remained more or less stable over the past years. Only 20% of all respondents across the Nordic countries report “yes” to having used ADR in the past 2 years. This seems to be in contradiction with the very good experiences at the Danish Institute of Arbitration with the use of ADR, even when the parties, to begin with, are reluctant to use mediation.
Across the Nordic Countries, the respondents’ report that disputes are becoming more complex and the use of settlement has increased, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. A Danish respondent note that they are careful in selecting which disputes to litigate, but when they litigate, they do so with full force. In addition, there has been an increase in the use of digital tools. At least 50% of the Danish respondent report having used videoconferencing for the taking of witness or expert evidence and used file sharing systems to organize the case files. In the beginning of the pandemic, hearings at the Danish Institute of Arbitration were postponed. As it became clear that the pandemic would last longer than people expected many hearings were conducted as physical or virtual meetings, and the Institute gained very good experiences with conducting remote hearings.
Finally, when asked about the importance of diversity in choice of arbitrator, only 10% of Danish respondents considered diversity important. The question about gender diversity when appointing arbitrators has been on the Danish Institute of Arbitration’s agenda for a number of years, since the Institute committed themselves to the pledge, which was introduced by the arbitration community in 2015, on promoting equal representation in arbitration.
You can read the Roschier Dispute Index 2021 on https://www.roschier.com/. For questions about the Danish Institute of Arbitration please contact Steffen Pihlblad on spi@danisharbitration.dk.