Ethical issues for counsel in international arbitration

This note considers the issues that can arise from duties of professional conduct owed by counsel in an international arbitration. It assesses the problems for parties and their counsel, and considers solutions that have been put forward and, in some cases, implemented. These include the International Bar Association (IBA) Guidelines on Party Representation in International Arbitration 2013, the general guidelines for parties’ legal representatives incorporated into the London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA) Rules 2014 and 2020, the Singapore Institute of Arbitrators (SIArb) Guidelines on Party-Representative Ethics 2018 and the International Council for Commercial Arbitration (ICCA) Guidelines on Standards of Practice in International Arbitration 2021.