Courting success

London's legal exports

Written by Benedict Springbett for the Greater London Project.

In the last year, the High Court has handed down judgments in the following cases:

• a dispute between members of the Qatari royal family over the ownership of a Mughal-era diamond;¹

• a Dutch aircraft owner claiming it was owed money by a Vietnamese airline;²

• litigation between Deutsche Bank and the Italian Province of Brescia over an interest rate swap;³

• allegations of US $874 million paid unlawfully by the former head of Kuwait’s social security pension scheme;⁴

• and a dispute between a Greek importer and Maersk, a Danish shipping line, concerning a shipment on the Klaipeda, a vessel flagged in the Marshall Islands, sailing from Dubai to Piraeus, the port of Athens.⁵

None of these disputes had any material connection to London or Britain, but in all cases the parties chose to use English law and English courts. Why?

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When clouds of pessimism hang over Britain’s economy, it is important that we remember the many things that Britain and London do well. Our politicians regularly talk up the tech sector, or the financial sector, or the creative sector, but there is one sector that is unquestionably doing better than all three. It is growing, it shows no signs of stopping, and it is a sector in which London is, to use the cliché, genuinely world-leading. That sector is international commercial litigation.

In 2013, before the invasion of Crimea, Ukraine issued bonds to the value of US$3 billion which were bought by the Russian government. The bonds were held on trust for Russia by a company set up for that purpose, which was incorporated in England and Wales. The parties also decided that any issues arising under the agreement would be litigated in the English courts.

Ukraine subsequently alleged that the bonds were issued under duress, because Russia had applied unlawful and illegitimate pressure on Ukraine, threatening its territory and intimidating Ukraine through trade sanctions.

The issue ultimately went to the Supreme Court, as it raised a novel point of contract law.⁶ But what is remarkable is that the parties were still happy for their dispute to be litigated in London. The case was heard in 2019 and 2021, after the Novichok poisonings that irreparably damaged relations between Russia and the United Kingdom. It was, as the Supreme Court put it, “a striking sign of the level of international confidence in British justice”.⁷

This dispute, which has only nominal relevance to Britain, came to London because the parties wanted it to: when parties make a contract, they can choose the legal system governing the agreement and under which disputes will be decided.

Because English law is so attractive to businesses and wealthy individuals, the Law Society estimates that English law governs £545 trillion worth of over-the-counter derivatives, £10 trillion worth of metals trades, and £250 billion of mergers and acquisitions deals.⁸ When these parties go to court, they end up in London: in the year ending March 2024, 64% of litigants in the Commercial Court (a part of the High Court which exclusively deals with commercial work) came from abroad.⁹ This work is just one part of a legal services industry whose net exports were worth £7.6 billion in 2023.¹⁰

It must be acknowledged that commercial litigation is an outlier within England’s justice system. The criminal and civil justice systems are both in crisis: legal aid has been cut, courts have been closed, and there are not enough judges.

These problems are serious, and need fixing. But we should be thankful that, in spite of this, the reputation of English commercial law remains strong.¹¹

Perhaps most importantly, this is because we have a long-lasting, strong tradition of the rule of law. This means that the law is applied consistently to everybody, the procedure is fair, and judges are independent.

For parties from countries which do not have a strong rule of law, this is almost certainly the biggest attraction. We take it for granted in Britain that the courts are fair, that contracts will be upheld, that property rights are certain, that there will be remedies against cheats and fraudsters. Sadly, in many parts of the world none of these things are true: as Gordon Brown once said, “in establishing the rule of law, the first five centuries are always the hardest”. The courts of London offer a sanctuary for companies wishing to do business in countries which have not had five centuries to develop the rule of law.

For international parties, the law itself is also attractive. English law is based on common law, a body of judge-made law that has evolved over the centuries. This contrasts with civil law systems, where the fundamentals of the law are laid down in a single code which was drafted all in one go, often in the nineteenth century. Common law is able to adapt flexibly to changing circumstances: for instance, cryptoassets have been recognised as a form of property in England.¹² English law is so attractive that the Dubai International Financial Centre, a special economic zone in Dubai which tries to compete with London as a dispute resolution centre, uses English law by default.

Getting expert advice on English law from abroad is easy: London has branch offices of over 200 law firms from 40 different countries.¹³ Getting advice doesn’t have to mean going to London: there are 6,500 English-qualified lawyers working abroad,¹⁴ and every major global city hosts the branch offices of several English law firms.

Lawyers have been the butt of jokes for centuries. Many people instinctively agree with Shakespeare’s Dick the Butcher, “the first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”¹⁵ They can seem like a bunch of overpaid, overclever people making abstruse points about the meaning of words. We are, however, only able to make these jokes because we take the rule of law for granted. Argument in court may seem pointless and expensive, but in fact it is the rule of law in action: before a court can enforce legal rights and obligations, it first has to determine what those rights and obligations are. ‘Lawyering’, within reason, is the golden thread that ensures each side gets to put its case forward, and that guarantees justice is done.

And certainly, taking the advice of Dick the Butcher would mean killing off more than just lawyers. It would mean killing off Legal London which, more than just a source of revenue for lawyers and exports for Britain, is a guarantor of the rule of law all over the world. Our legal system is something that we should celebrate.

1. Qatar Investment and Projects Development Holding Co v Elanus Holdings Ltd [2025] EWHC 303 (Comm).

2. Awas Netherlands A320-1 BV v Pacific Airlines Aviation Joint Stock Company [2024] EWHC 3194 (Comm).

3. Deutsche Bank AG v Provincia di Brescia [2024] EWHC 2967 (Ch).

4. The Public Institution for Social Security v Muna al-Rajaan al-Wazzan [2024] EWHC 480 (Comm).

5. Stournaras Stylianos Monoprosopi EPE v Maersk A/S [2024] EWHC 2494 (Comm).

6. Ukraine v The Law Debenture Trust Corporation plc [2023] UKSC 11. The case raised the issue of whether Russia’s trade restrictions constituted economic duress. The Supreme Court said that they did not.

7. Supreme Court and Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, Annual Report and Accounts 2022–23 (2023), 5.

8. The Law Society, International Data Insights Report 2023: Global Position of English Law (2023), 5.

9. TheCityUK, UK Legal Services 2024 (2024), 39.

10. UK Legal Services 2024, 6.

11. See Sir Geoffrey Vos MR, ‘The future of London as a pre-eminent dispute resolution centre: opportunities and challenges’ McNair Lecture (2023).

12. See for instance D’Aloia v Persons Unknown Category A & Ors [2024] EWHC 2342 (Ch).

13. UK Legal Services 2024, 26.

14. UK Legal Services 2024, 36.

15. 2 Henry VI Act IV Scene 2.