Thirty years ago, there were relatively few conferences devoted to international arbitration. That is no longer the case. Arbitration weeks, summits, forums, lectures, and seminars now take place in nearly every major arbitration centre, often with multiple events occurring in the same week. The conference circuit has become so extensive that an arbitration practitioner could make a career out of attending or speaking at conferences rather than actually practising law.
This raises a reasonable question for clients involved in international arbitration: should they care if their arbitration lawyers spend significant amounts of time attending, speaking at, or organising conferences?
The answer is not that conferences are inherently bad. Some are useful. They allow practitioners to exchange views, discuss new developments, and remain connected to the arbitration community. Some conferences, especially those involving in-house counsel, State representatives, industry participants, or arbitral institutions, can provide genuine insight into how arbitration is evolving. The problem today is one of excess.
Why Arbitration Conferences Used to Matter More
In the past, international arbitration conferences served an important educational function. Information about arbitration was far less accessible than it is today. Arbitral awards were often confidential, and institutional practices were less transparent. There were fewer specialist publications, fewer online resources, and fewer publicly available materials.
Conferences, therefore, helped practitioners learn from one another. They gave younger lawyers access to experienced arbitrators and counsel, and they allowed ideas to circulate across jurisdictions. In that sense, conferences played a useful role in the development of international arbitration.
The situation today is quite different. There is now an enormous amount of information available about international arbitration. Arbitral institutions publish rules, practice notes, statistics, and reports online. Specialist databases provide access to commentary, awards, and procedural materials. Law firms publish frequent legal updates. There are books, journals, podcasts, webinars, and newsletters on almost every topic. Artificial intelligence can also provide reasonable initial answers to most arbitration-related questions.
As a result, learning is no longer the principal justification for most arbitration conferences.
What Are Most Arbitration Conferences Really For?
Today, for most arbitration conferences, networking appears to be the principal purpose.
This is not a criticism. International arbitration is a relationship-driven field. Counsel, arbitrators, experts, funders, and institutions often operate within a relatively small global community. Meeting people can be professionally useful.
Experts have an obvious reason to attend arbitration conferences. Their natural clients are often lawyers, and conferences are full of lawyers. Arbitrators also have a reason to attend. They benefit from being known by counsel, institutions, and potential appointing parties.
For arbitration lawyers, however, the value is less obvious from a client’s perspective. Lawyers may attend conferences to build their reputations, meet other practitioners, find speaking opportunities, or develop their careers. Younger lawyers may use conferences to meet potential employers or mentors. More senior lawyers may use them to maintain visibility in the arbitration community. Those are legitimate professional objectives. But they are not necessarily the same as serving clients.
Clients rarely choose arbitration counsel because they met them at a conference of arbitration lawyers. Most serious arbitration clients are businesses, States, State-owned entities, investors, or high-net-worth individuals with actual disputes. A room full of arbitration practitioners is often a room full of colleagues, not clients.
The Client’s Main Concern: Focus
The main issue for clients is not whether their lawyers occasionally attend or speak at conferences. It is whether conference activity begins to interfere with the attention required by a case.
International arbitration is demanding, and good advocacy requires time, concentration, and judgment. Lawyers must master the factual record, prepare persuasive submissions, manage evidence, work with experts, prepare witnesses, consider procedural strategy, and anticipate the opposing party’s arguments. These tasks require sustained attention. They are not performed well by lawyers whose focus is constantly divided.
A lawyer who speaks frequently at conferences may well be knowledgeable and capable. Some conference participation may also reflect genuine expertise. But very frequent appearances may suggest that the lawyer has more time available for professional visibility than for client work, or at least that his or her priorities are divided. It may also raise a question about whether the lawyer has a sufficiently active case load. The practical question for clients is therefore: is this lawyer actually available to focus on my case?
There is also a cost dimension. Even when clients are not billed directly for time spent attending or speaking at conferences, that time is not free. Travel, preparation, networking, and absence from client work all form part of the economics of legal practice. Ultimately, those costs must be recovered somewhere, often through higher hourly rates or fee structures.
Clients may therefore reasonably ask whether extensive conference activity adds value to their dispute, or whether they are indirectly paying for a lawyer’s visibility. In a field where legal fees can already be substantial, this is a legitimate question. Clients hire arbitration counsel to resolve disputes effectively, not to subsidise a public profile.
The Same Concern Applies to Arbitrators
The concern is even more serious when it comes to arbitrators. Parties choose arbitration partly because they expect a fair and efficient process. Yet delays in the issuance of arbitral awards remain a frequent complaint. Some delays are unavoidable, particularly in complex cases. Others are harder to justify. If an arbitrator accepts too many appointments, travels constantly, and spends significant time speaking at conferences, this may affect his or her ability to move cases forward promptly.
Clients should therefore care about arbitrator availability. An arbitrator’s reputation is important, but so are diligence, responsiveness, and the ability to issue decisions and awards within a reasonable time. A well-known arbitrator who is frequently unavailable because of conferences, speaking engagements and travel will not be the best choice for a time-sensitive dispute.
Visibility Is Not the Same as Quality
One risk of the modern conference circuit is that it can reward visibility more than substance. A lawyer who speaks constantly may be perceived as highly qualified, even if he or she spends comparatively little time drafting submissions, preparing witnesses, developing strategy, or handling the day-to-day work of arbitration cases. Conversely, excellent arbitration lawyers may be less visible precisely because they are busy representing clients. This can create a distorted impression of expertise, where public prominence is mistaken for actual effectiveness.
Clients should understand that conference participation is only one possible indicator of professional reputation. The most relevant qualities in arbitration counsel remain judgment, written advocacy, strategic thinking, procedural skill, efficiency, responsiveness, and integrity. Similarly, the most visible arbitrators are not always the most efficient or the most suitable for a particular case.
Conferences Can Still Be Useful
None of this means that arbitration conferences have no value. They can be useful when they address genuinely new developments, such as sanctions, corruption allegations, artificial intelligence, climate-related disputes, third-party funding, enforcement trends, or changes in institutional rules. They can also be useful when they include actual users of arbitration, such as in-house counsel, business representatives, State officials, or industry participants. They also serve a social function, which should not be ignored: many conferences are enjoyable, and the opportunity to meet colleagues in attractive locations is plainly part of their appeal.
Smaller and more focused events may also be more valuable than large conferences where the same topics are repeated, and the same speakers appear year after year.
The problem is not that conferences exist. The problem is that there may now be too many of them, and that their purpose is not always stated honestly.
What Should Clients Take Away?
Clients do not need to be concerned merely because their lawyers attend or speak at arbitration conferences. A reasonable level of participation can be useful and may show that counsel remains engaged with developments in the field.
But clients should be cautious when conference activity appears excessive. They should be wary of lawyers who are constantly on panels, particularly where public visibility appears to be a substitute for actual case work. Visibility is not the same as effectiveness, and frequent speaking engagements are not proof that a lawyer will devote the necessary time, focus, and discipline to a client’s dispute. At a certain point, constant conference appearances may suggest not only divided priorities, but also that the lawyer’s practice is less occupied with client work than his or her public profile suggests.
A far better measure is actual performance in arbitration cases. Clients should ask what results counsel has achieved, what percentage of cases have been won or successfully resolved, and whether the lawyers who will actually work on the case have the experience and availability required. In arbitration, reputation matters, but results, judgment, responsiveness, and sustained attention to a case matter far more.