Blog 1: Arbitration with Mag. Kopecky

During today’s lecture with Mag. Kopecky at the University of Vienna, he spoke about arbitration. Arbitration is when a dispute is settled with an arbitrator. This tends to have drawn out writing periods for the dispute settling and a short court period. Arbitration can remain confidential with the respective parties, there are no appeals, and the two parties choose their own judges. Arbitration can pose up to five challenges. This includes advocacy, resource management, client management, evidence, and witness statements. Lawyers have to produce written words and oral pleadings for advocacy. Next, Mag. Kopecky spoke about how resource management can be a challenge for the lawyers of arbitration. This is when a lawyer has to make a tim,wine, budget, and milestone projection for the clients case which always seems to pose the challenge of time and resources. A case may seem easy to work however, anything can go differently than anticipated originally and a case can take much more time than needed. Client management is important because to work effortlessly together, a lawyer and client must learn the truth about each other, be able to communicate in a uncomplicated fashion, and must spend some time together to be able to cooperate for the best interest of the case. Mag. Kopecky stated that evidence must be proven. Evidence can be hard to collect and may take time which links back to the resource management challenge. This can be in the form of documents, reports or written and expert witness statements, which leads into the final challenge which is witness statements. These must be accurate and can be hard to come by because the party runs the case. Mag. Kopecky’s lecture about arbitration taught me a lot of new information about the topic and it was a pleasure to sit through.
- Kendra and Shafina