Arbitration proceedings: secrets of advocacy practice

Within the framework of cooperation with the “Jurisprudence” section of the Youth Movement of the Managers Association of Russia, Advocates of the Law Firm "YUST" held master classes for students and post-graduates of the Moscow universities.

On March 5, Advocate Arthur Rokhlin, Partner at the Firm, held a master class “Security measures within the arbitration proceedings”.

At the beginning of the event he said that “YUST” had been active on the legal services market for 20 years already, and that the Firm’s main activity was the representation of the clients’ interests in courts of arbitration and common law courts. Arthur Rokhlin, on the basis of his advocacy practice, decided to call the future lawyers’ attention to the procedural institute of security measures.

During the master class, the listeners were able to evaluate, from the position of practice, the way the basic and the secondary purposes of security measures are met. They learned why the courts had at first been loyal to imposing such measures in any dispute and why the courts later changed their attitude to reluctance to uphold the respective request made by a party.

Availing themselves of the event’s format, its participants discussed with Arthur Rokhlin, in the light of the latest trends in the area of court practice and lawmaking, the following:

• Why there is no need to take security measures during the disputes with public authorities;
• How the reforming of the CCRF provisions may affect the application of the norms of civil legal responsibility;
• What the consequences are for the parties of the SCA of Russia’s attempt to implement elements of case law into the Russian practice.

On March 13, Advocate Alexander Yevdokimov, Head of the Arbitration Courts Practice of the Firm, held a seminar “Evidence and proving in the arbitration proceedings”.

The legal collisions faced by advocates in practice were especially interesting for the listeners. A.Yevdokimov explained, giving examples to one of such collisions, that a court’s conclusion containing legal evaluation of a circumstance was not an ascertained actual circumstance. Said conclusion has no prejudicial nature, even though parties to disputes frequently claim the courts’ conclusions and not the facts ascertained by courts. This means that a collision arises between the principles of certainty and of legal stability.

The students and the post-graduates were able to learn during the master class:

• What role indirect evidence has in the construction of a line of defense for the client;
• What most frequent abuses are committed by misbehaving parties and how the courts of arbitration react to them;
• How the courts of arbitration evaluate different types of evidence: audio and video tapes, proof obtained from the Internet etc.

At the end of the event, its participants discussed with A.Yevdokimov the trends of increase of the claims by minority shareholders and the types of proof with which they manage to win corporate disputes in courts.