Shearman & Sterling were pleased to submit their response to the Consultation Paper on Outcome Related Fee Structures for Arbitration that was recently published by a Sub-committee of the Hong Kong Law Reform Commission.

In their submission of 16 March 2021, Senior associate Edward Taylor and associate Kitty Zheng (all Hong Kong-International Arbitration) agreed with the recommendations in the Sub-committee’s Consultation Paper that the law in Hong Kong should be reformed to permit outcome related fee structures, including conditional fee agreements and damages-based agreements, to be used in arbitrations and related proceedings. Allowing the use of such “no-win, no-fee” and “no-win, low-fee” arrangements would provide parties to arbitrations and related proceedings with additional flexibility in respect of how they fund their disputes. It would also align Hong Kong with many other leading arbitral jurisdictions that already allow outcome related fee structures.

Edward has previously written about the Sub-committee’s Consultation Paper and co-authored an article with Kitty about similar proposed reforms in Singapore.

The Team