Читать книгу Anuario de arbitraje 2018 - Mª José Menéndez Arias - Страница 14

One last feature of American litigation that is often claimed to have been imported into international arbitration is an aggressive or harsh style. The description of US litigators as ungentlemanly and overly aggressive, in addition to being a stereotype75), serves to indirectly and deceivingly paint lawyers from the rest of the world «as a merry circle of naïve tenderfeet, an epithet that can hardly characterize Europeans, or better, continental Europeans76).» European lawyers have tempers and emotions too, and while baseball may be virtually nonexistent in Europe, European lawyers are just as capable of playing hardball as American ones.

Aside from emulating one another’s behavior, there are certain techniques and practices that have found more prominence in international arbitration thanks to greater participation by foreign attorneys in Anglo-American law firms and law schools77). This factor has been largely responsible for the «indirect Americanization» of international arbitration, wherein American styles and techniques influence the content and manner of the written phase of an international arbitration despite the structure of that phase being relatively harmonized throughout the arbitration world78). As those firms expand and promote greater numbers of non-American and non-European lawyers to more senior positions79), it will be interesting to see whether the Americanization effect is softened or if it continues to make its presence felt due to the institutional practices of such firms being resistant to rapid change.