The rules of arbitration are being rewritten as jurisdictions and institutions respond to emerging trends and challenges, such as those presented by artificial intelligence. Global Insight examines what’s changing.

Recent reports from many major international arbitration institutions show caseloads increasing in number and in value. Another trend concerns the jurisdiction in which arbitration matters are being brought. In recent years, there’s been a notable shift towards matters being brought in Asia, particularly since the Covid-19 pandemic, as investors and companies in the region look for their disputes to be settled closer to home.

According to research from White & Case in collaboration with the School of International Arbitration at Queen Mary University, London remains the top jurisdiction for arbitration overall. But it’s now followed by Hong Kong and Singapore, with Beijing in fourth and Paris in fifth.

For international transactions, especially commodity trading, many arbitration matters previously took place in London, says Huawei Sun, senior counsel at Zhong Lun in Beijing. But such matters sometimes went badly for Chinese clients, she says, as they hadn’t negotiated strongly enough when it came to contract drafting and they weren’t familiar with arbitration procedures. ‘Chinese parties were rather passive, so they accepted the clauses proposed by the other parties,’ says Sun. ‘They didn’t know the significance of the arbitration clause. Now as they become more sophisticated and because of the promotion of Asian centres they know there are other opportunities.’

The Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre (HKIAC) and the China International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission (CIETAC) both reported record caseloads in 2025. The HKIAC received 388 arbitrations, valued at approximately $16.2bn, while the CIETAC reported 806 international matters in 2025, a year-on-year increase of 6.3 per cent.

The Singapore International Arbitration Centre (SIAC) took on 886 new matters in 2025, a figure representing its second-highest annual caseload on record, with 89 per cent of these being international in nature.

The data shows that demand to arbitrate in Asia – and especially at the major institutions there – is greater than ever. ‘If we look at the data for domestic arbitration in China it has always been huge,’ says Brad Wang, Deputy Secretary General (in Charge) at the CIETAC’s Hong Kong Arbitration Center. International arbitration has been a relatively small part of that total, but the number of matters is rising, with Wang highlighting that as Chinese businesses go global, they ‘bring their own arbitration clauses with them. That might end up with CIETAC or Hong Kong or Singapore arbitration clauses depending on the negotiation powers of the parties’.

Kim Rooney, Editor of the IBA’s Dispute Resolution International journal, adds that economic pressure is also a major driver for Asian parties to want to keep their arbitration closer to home. ‘In the mid-1990s parties were inclined to go to Europe or the United States for arbitration, but I get the impression that for people, time is money,’ she says. ‘They don’t want to travel for a week to do their case.’ Rooney says that the ability to arbitrate in Asia results from parties and lawyers having confidence in the legal systems and institutions in the region.

Asian governments and bar associations have made a significant effort to improve the knowledge of practitioners when it comes to international arbitration too. Wang says that Hong Kong and Singapore have long been proactive in ensuring that their law graduates emerge from university ready to grapple with the challenges of international arbitration, but China has been a little slower to catch up. However, in the last decade or so this has changed and universities now offer full courses on international arbitration. ‘That means a younger generation of Chinese lawyers are more familiar with the idea and the knowledge of international arbitration, so they’re not afraid to choose it as a mechanism for their parties,’ Wang says.

Of course, any dispute requires two or more parties, and those from outside Asia are increasingly comfortable with agreeing to arbitration in the region. The HKIAC says that 84.3 per cent of all arbitration matters submitted in 2025 had at least one party from outside Hong Kong. Meanwhile, 13.7 of arbitration matters submitted to the HKIAC in 2025 involved no Asian parties at all.

The SIAC’s caseload also comes from a wide variety of jurisdictions. In 2025 for example, the US came fifth in terms of the volume of caseload sent to the SIAC when ranked by jurisdiction, while Vietnam took second place. In 2025 at the CIETAC, there were 82 international matters where neither party was Chinese, representing a year-on-year increase of 10.8 per cent.

For foreign parties involved in arbitration in Asia, language remains a potential hurdle, but the institutions are moving to accommodate this. In 2025 for instance, 126 matters at the CIETAC adopted English, bilingual Chinese-English, Russian or bilingual Chinese-Russian as the language of arbitration. The CIETAC notes that in several matters, ‘arbitral tribunals determined, based on specific circumstances, to change the language of arbitration from Chinese to English’.

Wang warns that foreign parties must be aware of the risks of not specifying a language, especially if a contract was executed in Chinese. However, Rooney, an independent arbitrator and barrister at Rede Chambers in Hong Kong who also acts in Mainland China, says she’s generally asked to conduct matters in English.

An appetite for modernisation

Another way in which Asia is making itself more competitive is through the reform of institutional rules and national legislation. In autumn 2025, the Chinese National People’s Congress passed a revised Arbitration Law, following a public consultation in 2024. The new legislation came into effect in March and is intended to modernise the country’s arbitration framework. It has aligned China’s rules with the internationally recognised UNCITRAL Model Law, introduced ad-hoc arbitration – albeit in limited circumstances – and sets out that the choice of seat will determine the choice of law used in matters. The new legislation should also make it easier for foreign-headquartered companies to engage in arbitration in China.

The legislation introduced a default rule to clarify that the law of the seat of the arbitration will be applicable to the arbitration agreement, unless the parties agree otherwise. Additionally, a summary disposal rule has been put in place, which will enable arbitrators to make an early determination in matters that have no real prospect of success. Further, the relationship between the courts and arbitration tribunals was reviewed, and the new legislation introduced a number of changes relating to the jurisdiction of an arbitration tribunal and avenues for interventions by the courts.

Chiann Bao, a former Co-Chair of the IBA Arbitration Committee and a partner at ArbBoutique in Singapore, says the changes – particularly those relating to the seat of the arbitration – brought clarity that was missing from the old legislation. Kate Brown de Vejar, Co-Chair of the IBA Arbitration Committee and Global Co-Chair of International Arbitration at DLA Piper, says that ‘in the view of some, the biggest benefit of the new UK Act is simply that it has been revised, that one can refer to an instrument that has a more modern date’.

Rooney says that other jurisdictions continue to pay attention to England and Wales as a global centre for arbitration. The new UK Act is ‘an incentive to consider England and Wales as one of the places for arbitration,’ she says, adding that ‘it doesn’t mean it’s going to give it the automatic edge over another jurisdiction which offers similar predictability and where it may be cheaper in time and money to do it closer to home’.

Other jurisdictions considering changes to their arbitration rules include France, where a report proposing reform was released by the Ministry of Justice in spring 2025. The report is now out for consultation, with the country aiming to introduce legislative reform by autumn 2026. As in the UK, the aim is modernisation, with the French proposing to create a code of arbitration. This would bring the country’s domestic rules more in line with those already adopted by international arbitration and streamline the way in which appeals against awards are brought before the courts.

Diverging approaches

As arbitration increases in use around the world, situations have arisen where an unsuccessful party will try and bring the same claim in a different jurisdiction, or an affiliate will bring a similar claim that touches on issues that have already been decided. This raises the question of whether the previous arbitration award is binding, under the legal doctrine known as res judicata (‘a matter judged’). Different jurisdictions take varying approaches to this issue.

Dietmar Prager is Co-Chair of the IBA Arbitration Committee and also leads the IBA task force on res judicata in international arbitration. He explains that in international arbitration, ‘tribunals typically use a choice-of-law approach to determine which res judicata standard should apply’. There is no consistency in the approach chosen, as it varies by tribunal, explains Prager.

‘Depending on the choice-of-law approach chosen, a tribunal might apply a very broad or a very narrow res judicata standard,’ says Prager, a partner at Debevoise & Plimpton in New York. ‘Moreover, the domestic law res judicata standards were created for domestic court litigation, and do not consider the specific needs of international arbitration proceedings.’

In other words, there’s a large amount of inconsistency and unpredictability, with the potential for significant disagreement between parties about the applicable standard. ‘Parties go to arbitration to get a final and binding award,’ Prager says. ‘But there is a lot of uncertainty as to the scope of that finality. Arbitration practitioners and users have been increasingly unhappy with that uncertainty. There has been growing support for an autonomous res judicata standard that is tailored to the needs of international arbitration.’

The IBA task force is looking to define an autonomous standard that could be applied wherever the arbitration is seated. Prager says feedback has been overwhelmingly in support of such a standard.

The challenge comes in jurisdictions such as Germany or Switzerland where the courts have decided that a tribunal that sits in their country must apply their domestic res judicata standard. Prager hopes that eventually courts might accept that international arbitration tribunals can use an autonomous standard that’s tailored to their needs. He says that institutions might define the final and binding effect of an award in their rules by adopting an autonomous standard. ‘The really tricky thing is going to be to define an autonomous standard that will find broad acceptance by practitioners and courts alike,’ he says. The IBA task force is aiming to publish its guidelines on res judicata in spring 2027.

Rooney says that the issue of privilege in arbitration – which governs the protection of documents that otherwise would be disclosed – is similar to that of res judicata, in that approaches differ significantly around the world, and no standard has been agreed as yet.

Third-party funding and its use in arbitration is another issue where jurisdictions do things in different ways. Notably, the 2025 UK Arbitration Act avoided regulating its use, while Hong Kong and Singapore have in place statutory duties to disclose the use of third-party funding in a matter.

The implications of AI

Institutions and legislators alike are also engaging with the increasing use of AI and its impact on arbitration. AI is being deployed by lawyers to aid their work, but is viewed with trepidation by some, who highlight that it’s a developing technology, the full scope of which isn’t truly understood.

In autumn 2025, the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (CIArb) published guidance on the use of AI in arbitration. This ‘seeks to give guidance on the use of AI in a manner that allows dispute resolvers, parties, their representatives, and other participants to take advantage of the benefits of AI, while supporting practical efforts to mitigate some of the risk to the integrity of the process, any party’s procedural rights, and the enforceability of any ensuing award or settlement agreement’.

Claire Morel de Westgaver chaired the working group behind the CIArb guidance and is Managing Partner at Ontier in London. She says the guidance is intended to enable arbitrators and parties to determine where the line should be drawn when it comes to the use of AI tools in arbitration and the potential ramifications for due process and enforcement.

Morel de Westgaver says that empirical surveys show that AI is already being deployed by arbitration practitioners. She says this isn’t a problem in itself, especially given the potential benefits in terms of time and costs, for example. She warns however that there are grey areas and risks involved. In the US for example, there are instances of annulment proceedings being brought on the basis that the arbitral tribunal had used AI to prepare its award.

An IBA working group is also examining the use of AI in arbitration. It’s looking at whether a colour-based code could help those involved in arbitration decide whether it’s appropriate to use AI, in a similar way to how previous IBA guidelines have assisted arbitrators in disclosing potential conflicts of interest. Morel de Westgaver says that having a variety of tools to consider and adopt will be useful for practitioners.

However, there are concerns about whether arbitrators themselves should be using AI when considering evidence and writing decisions. Morel de Westgaver says AI tools for factual research are now very powerful and being used regularly by law firms and adds that ‘there’s a temptation for arbitrators to use those tools themselves. The problem with that is that they could miss some relevant information and may be seen as having, at least partially, delegated their mandate’.

Wang believes that arbitrators shouldn’t use AI in determinations. When it comes to AI, arbitration institutions need to use both an ‘accelerator’ and a ‘brake,’ he says. The ‘accelerator’, he explains, is the process of creating a ‘sandbox’ with enough data to aid arbitrators in research and everyday work. AI tools are, of course, trained on existing data, which presents a challenge in that the majority of arbitration decisions remain confidential. Those taken by the ICC and the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes are published, however, providing a starting point from which AI systems can be trained. Meanwhile, by the ‘brake’, Wang refers to the need to ensure AI doesn’t have an impact on decisions or awards.

Joanne Harris is a freelance journalist and can be contacted at joannerharris@gmail.com