THIRD-PARTY FUNDING: PRACTICAL, ETHICAL AND PROCEDURAL ISSUES

Nowadays the elective course "International Commercial Arbitration" is in demand. The primary objective of the study is to study the current trends in the development of legislation and practice in the field of arbitration, the implementation of which allowed achieving the key goal of the study - identifying advantages and disadvantages, familiarising a wide circle of lawyers, including novice lawyers, with the best international practices. This article reflects one of the current trends in the development of arbitration, namely, investments in financing the resolution of disputes by way of arbitration. This experience that has emerged in law enforcement practice has not yet reached sufficient legislative regulation, but at the same time has generated many ethical and procedural problems for the participants in arbitration. The authors of the article, using the comparative legal research method estimated the level of development of the considered legal phenomenon in many countries, noting that today the leaders should be called the UK, Australia, the USA, Singapore, and Hong Kong. As a result of the study, it can be concluded that the undoubted advantages of attracting a sponsor to finance arbitration proceedings are the increased access to justice in the absence of financial resources for one of the parties to address the arbitration court, despite the high probability of winning the dispute. Moreover, often the sponsor is interested and ensures the involvement of highly qualified lawyers, necessary experts in order to protect the legal rights and interests of the party. The undoubted advantage for the funded party is the sharing of risks with the funding organisation and minimising the risk of losses. However, with all the advantages of financing third-party international arbitration, there are always risks of practical, ethical and procedural issues, such as investor's intervention in the process, abuse of his authority over the funded party, the occurrence of a conflict of interest between the funded lawyer and the sponsor, breach of arbitration confidentiality and others. They affect the procedural effectiveness, the term of the proceedings, the increase in additional costs, the legal certainty of the arbitration proceedings. Will the golden mean be found? Answers will be found only with time.