Frequently Asked Questions

View our answers to commonly asked questions. Just click on one of the sections below to find the answer.

Arbitration

Arbitration is an alternative dispute resolution (ADR) process where the parties have mutually agreed - either before or once a dispute has arisen - to submit their dispute before an Arbitrator or Arbitral Tribunal.  

   

Parties to an arbitration have a great deal of control over the arbitral process, including the selection of their Tribunal members, diverging away from traditional "court-room" litigation. Ultimately, an arbitrator's decision ("award") is legally binding, and may be internationally enforced.  

We do not administer arbitral proceedings in the same manner as institutions such as the ICC, LCIA, and ADRIC. Nor does Arbitration Place offer its own set of procedural rules (with the exception of the Arbitration Place Appeal and Review Rules, which parties may adopt).  

   

Instead, Arbitration Place maintains co-operative relationships with these and other institutions, so that parties who elect an institutional arbitration (whether domestic or international) may host their proceedings at Arbitration Place and still benefit from our seamless, all-encompassing services.  

Arbitration Place offers best in class facilities, virtual case services, stenography with options including real-time reporting, daily rough draft and expedited transcripts, equipment and audio visual expertise, the PROCEED case management platform, videography, interpretation and more. Our Client Services team will work with you to document each aspect of your proceeding and will provide an individualized estimate.

Arbitration Place's roster of resident and non-resident arbitrators are all independent practitioners, all of whom have separate fee schedules for their services. For more information regarding rates, please contact our Client Service experts team at clientservices@arbitrationplace.com 

 

Arbitration Place can indeed act as fundholder (that is, to hold and disburse advances in relation to arbitration costs). If you wish Arbitration Place to do so, the following procedures and conditions shall apply: 

1. The following information must be submitted to accounts@arbitrationplace.com

 

  • The full names and contact information (including mailing address, e-mail address, telephone and facsimile numbers) of all parties and their counsel (if applicable);  
  • The full names and contact information of the Tribunal, including who appointed them, along with their agreed fee rates from the Terms of Appointment;  
  • The seat of the arbitration; and  
  • A copy of the executed Terms of Appointment.  

2. A file-specific reference number will be issued and deposit instructions will be provided. 

3. The parties’ funds are held with Ontario-based banks. Arbitration Place will not accept any responsibility or liability for any loss incurred by the parties as a consequence of the failure of any bank with which the parties’ funds have been deposited. 

4. Once a deposit has been identified and allocated, Arbitration Place will issue an acknowledgement of receipt to the parties and to the Tribunal. 

5. Requests by the Tribunal for a payment by Arbitration Place on account of its fees shall include receipts for any expenses incurred and amounts paid out shall be in accordance with the rates set out in the Terms of Appointment. Any requests received in a three-member Tribunal must be approved by the Chair. 

6. A copy of a request by the Tribunal for payment shall be provided to the parties for their review before payment is made. 

7. If the funds deposited by the parties exceed the costs of the arbitration, surplus funds will be returned to the parties, in the proportions in which they were deposited, unless otherwise specified by the Tribunal or agreed between the parties. Moreover, surplus funds will only be returned to the bank accounts of the stated beneficiaries or their appointed legal representative. 

8. Arbitration Place will charge the parties for time spent administering the funds deposited by the parties at an hourly rate of $150 CAD plus applicable taxes. 

9. Arbitration Place will render an invoice for its administration charges at the conclusion of the arbitration.  

APV manages matters in a virtual format. We provide end-to-end assistance to ensure a seamless experience – including a virtual counterpart for all the necessary functionality that you are used to for in-person hearings.  

  

For more information, please refer to our Virtual Services page.  

Arbitration Place Virtual is platform agnostic. In other words, we adapt our services to your demand, and can accommodate certain platform requests. If we notice that the requested platform provides an experience that may be contradictory to a smooth and successful virtual matter (it features a lack of security & encryption, or poor audio transmission), APV may suggest an alternate platform. In any case, at the end of the day, parties have the final say. 

 

If you seek platform suggestions, our clients often enjoy our services conducted on our Enterprise License of Zoom.  

Through our Enterprise License of Zoom, we benefit from AES 256 GCM encryption for real-time content. 

 

Moreover, Zoom’s controlled and transparent data routing allows us to opt-in or opt-out of any of its data centers (excluding our home region) and grants us the ability to customize and manage geographic regions for specific meetings. 

 

We ensure that no unauthorized participant will enter the virtual matter through the following safeguards: 

• Eleven (11) digit unique meeting IDs  

• Complex passwords  

• Waiting Rooms with the ability to automatically admit participants from your domain or another selected domain. Alternatively, our Virtual Case manager can manually accept any participant after verifying his credentials. 

• Meeting lock feature that can prevent anyone from joining the meeting  

• Ability to remove participants  

• Authentication profiles that only allow entry to registered users, or restrict to specific email domains 

 

We meet the following industry and security organization standards:  

● SOC 2 (Type II)  

● FedRAMP (Moderate)  

● GDPR, CCPA, COPPA, FERPA, and HIPAA Compliant (with BAA)  

● Privacy Shield Certified (EU/US, Swiss/US, Data Privacy Practices)  

● TrustArc Certified Privacy Practices and Statements   

Court reporting

A court reporter is a neutral party that manages the official record of what transpires at a proceeding.  They take down what is said in the room verbatim, and prepare a complete transcript, along with a list of the people who were in attendance, and all the start and end times (as well as breaks etc), and in the case of discovery transcripts, mark the undertakings, under advisements and refusals by counsel. 

 

In addition, a court reporter will mark exhibits during the pre-trial phase of a legal proceeding, and ensure all terminology is accurate and no words are missed or misconstrued, by ensuring that all speakers are speaking clearly and not talking at the time same, providing non-verbal answers, etc.  Most reporters can also administer oaths to swear witnesses. 

 

A court reporter can be booked by counsel for one of the parties, or directly by the courts.  Nonetheless, they maintain objectivity and ensure all parties to the proceeding have an opportunity to receive the same services.   

 

Court reporters are occasionally booked for non-legal proceedings that may have a legal element, such as shareholder meetings or  annual general meetings for organizations.   

No.  The reporter does not take notes or minutes.  They provide a verbatim record of every word.  

Occasionally reporters do make mistakes, or mishear what was said.  In that case, we have a dedicated and objective process for verifying the transcript. If there is indeed a mistake, Arbitration Place and their affiliated court reporters will produce either an errata sheet or a revised transcript, depending on the extent of the mistakes (or errata). 

 

Contact our production department if you feel a mistake has been made.  

We often do not provide a copy of the audio recording.  This is in order to provide objectivity and neutrality to the transcript and legal matter. Moreover, most courts will not accept an audio recording alone as evidence, as recordings can be easily tampered with (and have been tampered with in the past).  Additionally, the court reporter’s recordings might have accidentally picked up off the record comments or discussions that should not be given to opposing counsel.  Therefore, they are not released to ensure these situations do not happen. 

There are in fact a variety of court reporters with different skill sets and abilities, to suit the many different types of legal proceedings that exist. 

 

Non-stenographic reporter will produce at least two audio recordings from the proceeding, make notes regarding attendances, times and mark exhibits, and then appropriately label and save the recordings.  If a transcript is requested, the audio and notes are handed to certified transcriptionists who produce the transcripts.  

 

Steno reporters  use a stenotype machine connected to a laptop with software that converts the shorthand directly into comprehensible text. Steno reporters can turn transcripts around more quickly than other types of reporters, because they can produce more accurately a higher rate of words per minute. Hence, at the end of the proceeding, a draft copy of the transcript is already available.  Of course, this draft copy will require further  attention to certify it as 100% accurate. As a consequence, steno writers are ideal for proceedings that require a fast turnaround on the transcript.    

 

Real-time reporters are steno reporters capable of typing in excess of 225 words per minute, when the average lies around 160 words per minute. These reporters usually have about 95% of the transcript already down at the end of the day.  In order to help counsel prepare for the next day of the proceeding, they can provide them with a draft transcript at the end of the day, so that counsel can focus on the case instead of taking notes.  Even more so, a real-time reporter can provide a direct feed to their laptop, known as a real-time feed.  This service is similar to closed captioning, and with it counsel can see the transcript as it is being typed. This service is ideal in complex matters to keep participants up to date on what’s happening in the proceeding.  Real-time feeds can be sent to anyone in the world, thus counsel can get a real-time feed for their clerk back at the office, in order to prepare answers for future days of proceeding.

Although they bear similarities, they are ultimately different. While real-time feed will solely render the words that are said, captioning will provide not just the words, but the mood with which they were pronounced (i.e. noting sarcasm, or laughter), and other environmental cues (i.e. a door slams). With captioning, someone with a hearing impairment can effectively participate to the proceeding.  For this reason, if a matter requires captioning and a transcript, that matter will need two reporters, one for each writing styles.  

Such eventuality might occasionally occur if the reporter is not given enough time and the needed documents to prepare, particularly if the matter is highly technical.  Steno software relies on a dictionary to convert the shorthand into real text.  If the reporter does not create the “shortcuts” in advance, particularly for words not heard every day, then the real-time can be greatly affected.  The same can happen with captioning or even interpretation. We always encourage when you are booking these services to provide as much background documentation as you can, so you can get the best possible service.   

A dirty transcript, also sometimes coined rough, uncertified or rough draft, is a draft that has not been proofed and certified by the court reporter, and therefore may contain errors or omissions. Draft transcripts cannot be submitted to the courts.  Only certified transcripts are accepted as evidence.   

A mini transcript, also named “condensed” or “4 by 1” is a transcript that has been condensed so that each page shows four pages of transcript in quadrants.  As they are smaller in size, they are more compact in paper format.  Most condensed transcripts also include a word index, that shows where in the transcript each word occurs by page and line number reference.  Many condensed transcripts even hyperlink the word index, so you can click on the reference in the index and it takes you right to the page. One can also request a word index for a full size transcript, but this is less common.   

Generally, our transcript package includes a transcript in PDF format, a mini transcript with word index in PDF format, and a text file for use with litigation software. The PDF files are all OCR enabled, and you can easily cut and paste text as required.   

 

Other formats are available upon request, such as Word, ptx, Amicus, WordPerfect, etc.  If the court reporter retains the exhibits, we can also append and/or hyperlink them to the full or condensed transcript as required. 

It depends on the situation. If the transcript spurns from a pre-trial matter, only the counsel to the proceeding can obtain a copy. Otherwise, we will need approval from counsel to provide the transcript.  

 

If the transcript concerns public proceedings, then anyone can obtain a transcript. We are happy to provide transcript copies. 

At the very minimum, we need the date, start time, length and location where the court reporter is required, as well as your name and contact information.  The more information you can provide, the better prepared the court reporter will be.   

Additional questions we will ask include:  

  1. Court file number 
  2. Case name/Style of cause 
  3. Name of witness(es) 
  4. What type of proceeding is it?   
  5. Exam, hearing, interview, etc?  
  6. Name of counsel attending, including opposing counsel  
  7. Any transcript requirements.  

 

Please note that not all court reporters can turn the transcript around in a day, or provide a rough draft.  If you think you need special services, please let us know in advance.  

 

You should warn us of any specific traits your matter might have:  

  • Does your matter have a protective order on it?   

  • Does the witness need or will have an interpreter present?   

  • Do you need a bilingual reporter?  

  • Is the matter highly technical?  

 

For on site bookings, please confirm the number of attendees (so we have a room that can accommodate everyone!). 

 

Most of our reporters are in Toronto or Ottawa. However, we have international reach and work with international reporters located all across Canada, the United States, Europe and beyond for on-site requirements. Alternatively, with our leading Arbitration Place Virtual platform, we can now seamlessly provide you with service regardless of where you, opposing counsel or the witness is located.  

Resources

If one of our clients is technologically unprepared, we ship them our Virtual Remote Kits which comes with all the necessary hardware to ensure a smooth technological experience during your matter.  

For pricing and additional information regarding our Virtual Remote Kits, please contact info@arbitrationplace.com 

 

Arbitration Place adheres to and follows all recommendations from Toroto Public Health and Public Health Ontario. You can view the most recent updates and recommendations on their websites

Arbitral secretaries, or tribunal secretaries, assist and help the arbitrator or tribunal draft and deliver their award. 

 

We can indeed offer the services of an arbitral secretary.  

Arbitration Place’s roster can use the procedural rules and model arbitration clauses of the following partner institutions: 

- International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) 

- ICDR Canada 

- LCIA Arbitration and ADR worldwide 

- ADR Chambers 

- ADR Institute of Canada 

You can read Arbitration Place’s Arbitration Appeal and Review Rules in the following PDF:

PDF

Arbitration Place's roster of arbitrators are all independent practitioners who maintain their own schedules. If you so wish to know the availability  of one of our affiliated arbitrator, we would be happy to connect you directly with the arbitrator or their assistants in order to confirm their availability for a particular appointment. 

If you request it, or we deem it necessary for the complexities involved in your virtual proceeding, you can receive tailored virtual training from one of our amazing Virtual Case Managers. In this technical rehearsal, we will troubleshoot all parties’ technological setups and share best practices to make sure your proceeding goes as smoothly as possible.

Do technical rehearsals seem too involved for you, but you still want knowledge about best practices? Instead, please send a request to view our technical rehearsal virtual demo to info@arbitrationplace.com

Virtual Case Managers are there to ensure a smooth proceeding. They will help troubleshoot technical issues and facilitate the proceeding in a way that best leverages the virtual platform to support all your proceeding’s demands. 

 

Whether you need to discuss with your client privately or need a suggestion for the technology you need for the big day, our Virtual Case Managers will answer your needs. 

 

Moreover, our Virtual Case Managers can either teach you how to confidently display your documents or present them for you with trial presentation software.  

We do indeed provide document management. Our Virtual Case Managers can either display your documents for you if we receive the documents ahead of time.

APV is also equipped to use various document management services, such as CaseLines, if the parties prefer. 

In any scenario, we will work with you to suit your needs. 

If you have additional inquiries regarding document management, please contact info@arbitrationplace.com