‘And it works’, says Tay Yu Jin, about a virtual mediation he participated as counsel in 2020. The case, a massive energy dispute, involved many parties dialing in from five jurisdictions across several time zones. Yu Jin further explains the value of institutional mediation; SIMC facilitated the pre-mediation process and administered the week-long session – no easy feat, considering the scale of the case.
Watch the full interview or read the interview transcript below.
We thank Yu Jin for sharing his views.
“From the point at which the mediator was selected, we were able to put together a one-week mediation within a matter of approximately two to three weeks which is amazing, given the number of jurisdictions and number of places where the people and the participants were located. So that was a huge success.”
Tay Yu Jin, Partner & Head of International Arbitration (Asia), Mayer Brown; SIMC Specialist Mediator
My name is Tay Yu Jin. I’m a partner in the international law firm, Mayer Brown, and I head the international arbitration practice for Asia, from Singapore.
One of our interesting experiences with the SIMC this year (2020) was a virtual mediation that took place across five different jurisdictions completely virtually, not in person. And the jurisdictions were London, Geneva, Dubai, India, Singapore. This was a dispute from the energy sector between two international energy companies. Interestingly, the case had no connection with Singapore. The arbitration seat was actually London, but the parties selected the SIMC to administer the case because of SIMC’s, global reputation as a specialist mediation centre. And I have to add that the SIMC did a fantastic job and it was a very successful experience. So in first place, the SIMC was selected for its expertise, and a key part of that exercise was convincing the parties that the SIMC was the right institution to neutrally select a shortlist of global mediators with the right experience and credentials. The parties were very specific about the types of experience they were looking for and the types of expertise and the parties have also considered other mediation centres around the world.
The SIMC drew up a shortlist, a very short shortlist, that was effectively what the parties were looking for. And indeed, the parties agreed very quickly on the choice of a mediator based in London. And that was part of what helped us to kick off a successful mediation. From the point at which the mediator was selected, we were able to put together a one-week mediation within a matter of approximately two to three weeks which is amazing, given the number of jurisdictions and number of places where the people and the participants were located. So that was a huge success.
Admittedly, at first, I was skeptical as to how effective it would be so my expectations were fairly limited. But a few takeaways were as follows.
First, a fully, virtual mediation can be as effective as an in-person mediation.
One of the key attractions of that is the ability to organise within a fairly short space of time, meetings between the participants without worrying about travel, without worrying about whether schedules match, and you can schedule short caucuses, short private or joint sessions very quickly in this way.
One aspect of the technology that we used was to set up a document exchange protocol, which allowed or encouraged parties to exchange key pieces of evidence openly with each other. Obviously, mediation is without prejudice to arbitration and litigation. But in many cases, the key evidence is already known by the parties and they were able to exchange it, and to engage quite directly and openly on the strengths and weaknesses of those pieces of evidence under the facilitative guidance of the mediator. That was very effective, because it helps the parties again, to focus their minds on where perhaps they could narrow their differences.
And that is a great advantage. And as more people become experienced with this technology in this process, mediation will certainly become more effective, and I believe more popular.