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DIS KICKS OFF RULES OVERHAUL By Johann von Pachelbel and Tobias Kopp (Frankfurt) BACKGROUND TO DIS AND THE RULES REVISION The German Arbitration Institution (Deutsche Institution für Schiedsgerichtsbarkeit, or “DIS”) has initiated a wholesale revision of its rules of arbitration. DIS will consult widely among the German and international arbitration community before publishing draft rules. The new rules are expected to come into force in the second half of 2017. DIS is Germany’s principal arbitral institution. With its heritage going back to the 1920s, it was set up in its current form in 1992. In 2015, it handled 140 cases, with a total value in dispute in excess of €2 billion. Just under a third of current DIS proceedings are international in nature. In early May 2016, DIS announced a complete revision of its rules. The existing rules have been in force since 1998—though the institution adopted supplementary rules for expedited proceedings in 2008—and are therefore among the oldest of any major arbitral institution. Amid the recent wave of revised arbitral rules, DIS has made a deliberate decision to proceed slowly. It is better, the thinking went, to wait and see what other institutions do. That way, DIS could evaluate evolving international best practice and take a considered view on which changes to adopt (and which not to). Dr. Francesca Mazza, the Secretary 42 | K&L Gates: ARBITRATION WORLD General of DIS, is a major driving force of the revision process. She joined DIS from the ICC, where she was closely involved in the recent revision of the ICC Rules. She described the institution’s reform as part of a larger effort of modernising the DIS. Recent modernisation projects include the reform of the sports arbitration rules, including a system to provide legal aid to athletes in anti-doping disputes, and modernisation of the IT and infrastructure at DIS. Currently, the institution is working on a project which will lead to a new website and branding for the institution and the publication of a collection of awards collected in post-M&A disputes. A WIDE RANGING CONSULTATION PROCESS DIS wishes to consult with as broad an audience of stakeholders as possible. To do so, it has issued an open invitation to arbitration experts—practitioners and academics—both in Germany and internationally to participate in an “expert commission”. This is envisaged to be a kind of plenary body that will generate a large number of diverse proposals for rule changes. These proposals are then put through a two-tier review process. A “consolidation commission”— membership by appointment only—sifts through the proposals to consolidate them, distilling a set of desirable