Sophie Nappert delivered the opening keynote address of the 2024 London Summer Arbitration School on Monday, 17 June 2024. Those who are not attending the school in person as faculty members or participate can join the event online by registering free of charge here. The keynote was co-moderated by Prof Yarik Kryvoi and Prof Anna Petrig.
The keynote examined the ways in which the arbitral process might adapt to be relevant to the values of the Web3 economy, and notably by taking a fresh look at due process. As ways of doing business evolve, as new types of commercial transactions emerge, so the nature of the disputes arising out of these transactions changes, as does the vector for their resolution. Just as commercial arbitration historically flourished because industry-specific disputes demanded decision-makers who were knowledgeable in the given industry and respected by their peers, so the current reality of e-commerce is giving rise to a new breed of cross-border, high-volume, low-value, one-shot disputes. The resolution of such disputes through traditional processes are ill-suited, premised as they are on due process measures that are time-reliant. This increasingly dominant voice in the marketplace prompts the question whether a less time-consuming approach to arbitration’s traditional reliance on due process, leveraging technological tools, might constitute an acceptable trade-off to elicit a speedier, consensus-based, cheaper decision, thereby delivering more satisfaction to e-commerce users, and thus garnering more trust.
Sophie Nappert is an arbitrator in independent practice, based in London. She is dual-qualified as an Avocat of the Bar of Quebec, Canada and as a Solicitor of the Supreme Court of England and Wales. Before becoming a full-time arbitrator, she pursued a career as an advocate and was Head of International Arbitration at a global law firm. She is commended as “most highly regarded” and a “leading light” in her field by Who’s Who Legal. Sophie is highly sought-after in complex energy, investment and natural resources disputes. Sophie is trained and has practised in both civil law and common law jurisdictions. She holds degrees in both common law and civil law from McGill University and a master’s degree in law from King’s College London. For over a decade she served as the peer-nominated Moderator of OGEMID, the online discussion forum on current issues of international investment law, economic law and arbitration. Since 2019, she co-chairs the ICC Task Force on Allegations of Corruption in International Arbitration, the largest ICC Task Force to date.
Sophie is a pioneering practitioner at the intersection of arbitration and Legal Tech. In 2019, she completed the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School Programme on Blockchain Strategy. In 2021, she co-founded ArbTech, a knowledge-sharing platform fostering cross-disciplinary dialogue on technology, dispute resolution and the future of justice. In its first year of existence, ArbTech was shortlisted at the 2022 GAR Awards. Sophie is the author of a Commentary on the 2010 UNCITRAL Arbitration Rules. She is a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on issues of international arbitration, international investment law and dispute resolution. She is a guest lecturer at Columbia Law School, Harvard Law School and McGill University Faculty of Law. She created the Nappert Prize in International Arbitration, open to young scholars and practitioners worldwide, administered under the auspices of McGill University.
The keynote was hosted by Peters & Peters in London.
