This webinar was organised by law firm Savoie Laporte as part of Paris Arbitration Week on 20 September 2021. The topic was: “Is There an App for That? Arbitration of Smaller Commercial Disputes in the Technology Sector“. The speakers were Myriam Seers, Sophie Nappert, Prof. Amy Schmitz and Colin Rule.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Myriam Seers joined Savoie Laporte as a partner in 2021 after practising for 14 years in major Canadian business law firms. She specializes in investment treaty arbitration and international commercial arbitration, with a particular focus on disputes arising from the mining, electricity (including renewable energy), oil & gas and transportation sectors. She has experience with disputes involving projects all over the world, with a particular emphasis on Latin America. She also appears before Canadian courts in proceedings to set aside or enforce foreign arbitral awards. Myriam is based in Toronto, Canada, a global center for the mining industry. Throughout her career, she has worked on cases involving mining projects at all phases of their life cycle, from early-stage exploration to development-stage projects to operating mines, in jurisdictions as varied as Ecuador, Mexico, Costa Rica, Côte d’Ivoire, Madagascar and the Kyrgyz Republic. She has extensive experience helping clients navigate the wide variety of roadblocks that can stall or stop a mining project over the course of its life, and in fearlessly advocating on clients’ behalf in an investment treaty arbitration or other dispute resolution forum when those roadblocks cannot be overcome. Myriam also has substantial experience with disputes involving renewable energy projects, including offshore wind, onshore wind, hydroelectric and solar projects. Myriam is ranked as a “Future Leader” by the global publication “Who’s Who Legal: Arbitration” (which states that she is “truly excellent” and has “a remarkable reputation for her work on large, complex international arbitration proceedings”) and “Up and Coming” by Chambers Canada: Dispute Resolution (which states that she is “extremely bright and dynamic” and “attracts praise for her ability to understand and manage very complicated situations”). She works in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian. In addition to her counsel practice, Myriam sits as an arbitrator and is part of Arbitration Place’s NextGen roster of arbitrators. She has been appointed arbitrator by the International Court of Arbitration of the ICC. She is the Vice-Chair of the ICC Canada Arbitration Committee, Canada’s Representative on the Institute for Transnational Arbitration’s Americas Initiative, the Regional Editor for common law jurisdictions of the Delos Guide to Arbitration Places and a frequent guest lecturer on investment treaty arbitration at Osgoode Hall Law School and McGill University. She is also coaching Osgoode’s first-ever moot team to compete in a Spanish-language moot competition.
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. Sophie is trained and has practised in both civil law and common law jurisdictions. She holds degrees in common law and civil law from McGill University and a Masters’ 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. She is commended as “most highly regarded” and a “leading light” in the field by Who’s Who Legal. Sophie is an award-winning lecturer and the first female recipient of the Global Arbitration Review Award for Best Speech in 2016 for her Inaugural EFILA Annual Lecture on International Investment Arbitration: Escaping from Freedom? The Dilemma of an Improved ISDS. She delivered the 2018 Proskauer Lecture on International Arbitration, Disruption Is The New Black, which was also shortlisted for Best Speech at the 2019 GAR Awards. Sophie takes great interest in the impact of technology in her field. In 2019, she completed the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School Programme on Blockchain Strategy. She pioneered scholarship on technology in arbitration that is cited as a reference on the topic. In 2021, she co-founded ArbTech, a worldwide, online community forum fostering cross-disciplinary dialogue on technology, dispute resolution and the future of justice. Sophie is committed to promoting and achieving diversity in international arbitration. In addition to her capacity-building work in emerging jurisdictions, notably in Latin America and the Caribbean, she serves as a Champion of Burford Capital’s Equity Project, a $50 million pool of capital earmarked to fund women-led litigation and arbitration cases. 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.
Amy Schmitz joined the University of Missouri School of Law and the Center for Dispute Resolution as the Elwood L. Thomas Missouri Endowed Professor of Law in 2016. Previously she was a Professor at the University of Colorado School of Law for over 16 years. Before teaching, Professor Schmitz practiced law with large law firms in Seattle and Minneapolis and served as a law clerk for the U. S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit. Professor Schmitz teaches courses in Contracts, Lawyering, Online Dispute Resolution (ODR), AI, Data Analytics and the Law, Arbitration, International Arbitration, and Consumer Law (service learning). She has been heavily involved in ODR teaching and research for a long time and is a Fellow of the National Center for Technology and Dispute Resolution, as well as the Co-Chair of the ABA Technology Committee of the Dispute Resolution Section and the ODR Task Force. She serves on the Association of American Law Schools Executive Committee on Commercial and Consumer Law, was an External Scientific Fellow of the Max Planck Institute Luxembourg, and is a researcher with the ACT Project with the Cyberjustice Laboratory in Montreal, Canada, exploring AI and ODR. Professor Schmitz is an active speaker on ODR and law and technology throughout the world and hosts a web series on arbitration, The Arbitration Conversation. She has published over 50 articles in law journals and books, and a book, The New Handshake: Online Dispute Resolution and the Future of Consumer Protection, with Colin Rule.
Colin Rule is President and CEO of Mediate.com and Arbitrate.com. In 2011 Colin co-founded Modria.com, an Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) provider based in Silicon Valley, which was acquired by Tyler Technologies in 2017. From 2017 to 2020 Colin served as Vice President of ODR at Tyler. From 2003 to 2011 Colin was Director of ODR for eBay and PayPal. Colin has worked in the dispute resolution field for 25 years as a mediator, trainer, and consultant. He is currently Co-Chair of the Advisory Board at the National Center for Technology and Dispute Resolution at UMass-Amherst, and is a Lecturer-in-Law at the Gould Center for Conflict Resolution at Stanford Law School. Colin co-founded Online Resolution, one of the first online dispute resolution (ODR) providers, in 1999 and served as its CEO and President. In 2002 Colin co-founded the Online Public Disputes Project, which applied ODR to multiparty, public disputes. Colin also worked for several years with the National Institute for Dispute Resolution in Washington, D.C. and the Consensus Building Institute in Cambridge, MA. Colin is the author of Online Dispute Resolution for Business (published by Jossey-Bass in September 2002) and co-author of The New Handshake: Online Dispute Resolution and the Future of Consumer Protection (published by the American Bar Association in 2017). He received the first Frank Sander Award for Innovation in ADR from the American Bar Association in 2020, and the Mary Parker Follett Award from the Association for Conflict Resolution in 2013. He holds a Master’s degree from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government in conflict resolution and technology, a graduate certificate in dispute resolution from UMass-Boston, and a B.A. in Peace Studies from Haverford College. He served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Eritrea from 1995-1997.
