Welcome to Australian Arbitration

Welcome to Australian Arbitration.

Australian Arbitration is a leader in Alternative Dispute Resolution.

Australian Arbitration specialises in supporting your efforts to resolve commercial disputes in the shortest time with the least expense. Although we specialise in intellectual property and new technology disputes, our team is flexible. We can provide staff to resolve the complete range of commercial disputes from building and construction contracts to international charterparty and shipping contracts. To offer the widest possible cover for our clients, Australian Arbitration has partners, staff and members available in most jurisdictions of the world and can deal with disputes across national and legal system boundaries.

If you fail to produce an agreed solution by negotiation, Australian Arbitration can supply the full range of mediation, conciliation, expert determination and arbitration services. At best, our staff will do no more than guide the negotiations so that you can arrive at an agreed settlement. Hence, mediation and conciliation represent superior systems for resolving commercial disputes, because they are most likely to preserve goodwill between those involved.

Should the situation require a slightly more interventionist approach, our experts, umpires, special referees and arbitrators will assume a greater role in identifying the issues, making findings of fact and, if the parties agree, applying relevant laws to the facts to decide some or all of the issues. Although this mimics some of the features of litigation, the procedures are usually informal, and avoid the expense and time delays involved when cases are referred to the courts. Australian Arbitration puts you in control and sets up the process to meet your specific needs. You will identify the issues to be considered, the extent to which any decision made will be binding, whether a "losing" party will pay some or all of the costs incurred by the “winner”, and so on.

Should you be unable to produce a solution binding on all parties, it may be necessary to resort to the courts. In that event, Australian Arbitration will be able to supply you with a pre-trial bundle:

• identifying the precise legal issues for a court or tribunal to resolve;
• compiling a clear statement of the facts agreed and the facts in dispute; and
• putting together a file of the documents in support.

This ensures that much of the basic pre-trial work has been done and so your potential use of the courts can be targeted and efficient. This bundle will, of course, respect the parties’ privacy and will do no more than set out the information objectively. Nothing that the parties claimed or admitted during the process will be revealed unless all sides agree to waive the usual agreement on confidentiality. Thus, Australian Arbitration’s service will save you money either because our mediators, conciliators, experts and arbitrators resolved your disputes quickly and cheaply, or because our scale of fees is significantly less than that charged by lawyers to prepare for trial.