As part of a new initiative to promote British courts, Justice Secretary Chris Grayling has urged international firms to bring their legal disputes to the UK.
Legal services make up an increasingly major proportion of UK export earnings – each year, up to £3.5 billion is brought into Britain by lawyers – and this is something that Grayling is keen to build on.
A prime example of the sort of dispute Grayling is hoping will begin to frequent British arbitration panels is last year’s £3 billion dispute between Russian billionaires Roman Abramovich and Boris Berezovsky. The matter generated “tens of millions” in legal fees for London-based legal services, the Guardian reported.
Grayling told the newspaper: “The City of London is known as a global capital of finance, but it is equally a world centre for legal services.
“Any plan to promote UK industry abroad that ignored legal services would be like going to Wimbledon and missing the tennis because … this is a sector that contributes over £20 billion to the UK economy. Three and a half billion comes from exports, a figure which has shot up in the past decade. It’s estimated that nine in every 10 of commercial arbitration cases handled by London firms now involve an international party,” Grayling went on to say.
Many of the commercial cases that have come from abroad are now heard in the newly-opened Rolls Building in Holborn, which is fast becoming a symbol of the UK’s burgeoning judicial success.