Key takeaways from London International Disputes Week 2024

A team of disputes lawyers from Taylor Wessing attended numerous networking events across the week, including the main conference, opening drinks, and gala dinner.

LIDW24 has been a great way to network with international delegates, in-house lawyers, domestic lawyers, and barristers. There was a lot of appetite to discuss global disruption to the legal industry, including AI and ESG, as well as London being a forum of choice for dispute resolution. Lady Chief Justice went a step further in her opening speech to discuss how there is still work to be done to ensure London continues to be a centre of excellence, and she discussed new ideas such as the creation of a dispute resolution committee bringing together practitioners from across different courts and dispute resolution centres to share best practices.

Taylor Wessing also had the pleasure of hosting our own member-hosted events throughout the week including a panel discussion on ‘Harnessing the Power of AI in ADR’, where the panel discussed the merits of using AI to enhance the ADR process as well as the fact that litigators will always be needed to provide the human context that is key to resolving disputes. Plus a panel discussion on blockchain and the future of commercial disputes, where the panel considered how fraud is synonymous with cryptocurrencies now, the difficulties with DAOs and pure code smart contracts, and how they will be approached by the courts.