By Joanne Strain, Parnika Chaturvedi King & Wood Mallesons’ Dubai office. 

Arbitration agreements frequently impose preconditions to arbitration, requiring the parties to engage in a sequential combination of mediation, conciliation, good faith negotiations, and/or other such mechanisms, prior to initiating arbitration.

While often well intended, so as to cause the parties to pause before initiating formal dispute resolution, and potentially avoid unnecessary costs and time on proceedings, all too often, by the point a dispute has materialised, formal dispute resolution is the only answer.

In those circumstances, the pre-conditions can become a headache: compliance is vital (as failure could be fatal to any proceedings) but the terms of pre-conditions can be vague. Continue Reading Waterfalls in the Gulf: Pre-conditions to arbitration