Future disputes under the microscope

Brexit will not have the ‘dramatic effect’ on financial services disputes that some people have predicted, the Chancellor of the High Court has said.

Sir Geoffrey Vos, giving a speech on this issue during London International Disputes Week this week, pointed out that English common law, which is ‘predictable and consistent’, will not be affected by Brexit at all. English business and property courts have ‘unrivalled expertise’. Moreover, he said, ‘my experience suggests that the most important things are the rule of law, the integrity of the judges and the system, and the quality of the judges.’

While post-Brexit reciprocal enforcement of judgments between EU member states and the UK has not yet been agreed, he said he ‘would not expect if to be long delayed’.

The biggest issue, he said, is smart legal contracts, since there will ‘soon be three trillion borderless smart legal financial services contracts every year’. The UK’s Law Tech Delivery Panel is currently working on plans for a dispute resolution process for this.