Brian Hutchinson

Brian Hutchinson is Associate Professor in the School of Law where he has been a member of staff since 1991. A specialist in the fields of Commercial Law and Alternative Dispute Resolution, he has researched and written on Arbitration and ADR, Online Dispute Resolution, Company Law, Commercial Law, Contract Law and Agency, and Information Technology. He is Editor of the Commercial Law Practitioner Law Journal (ISSN 0791-895X), former Editor of Irish Business Law Journal (ISSN 1393-6220), and he is a member of the Editorial Boards of the Irish Jurist. (ISSN 0021-1273) and the International Journal of Online Dispute Resolution (Eleven International Publishing, The Hague, Netherlands). In 2000 he was appointed to the advisory board of e-Resolution, one of the first bodies accredited by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to provide online arbitration for the resolution of internet Domain Name Disputes. In 2001 he became Project Leader of the pilot phase of the ECODIR (Electronic Consumer Dispute Resolution) project ((www.ecodir.org) (DG Sanco n° B5-1000/00/000112) supported by the EU Commission and the Irish Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, which, begun in the University of Namur, Belgium and the University of Montreal, Canada, pioneered the development of online dispute resolution in Europe, and he continues to steward the ecodir service. He was co-founder and company secretary of Arbitration of International Disputes Ltd, an Irish company owned and formed by the Bar Council, Law Society, Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland, Business and Employers Confederation, and Institute of Arbitrators (Irish Branch) with the support of the Irish Government Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment to explore the use of online arbitration in Ireland). He was also Chair of the EU Commission supported "CCForm" EU IST Thematic Network (IST-2001-34908) Topic Panel 5 - «CCForm and ADR», and he has acted as consultant to Irish Government Department of Enterprise Trade and Employment, e-business unit; and the Law Reform Commission of Ireland. From 1998-2004 Brian was Committee Member of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (Irish Branch), and he is an invited founder Member of the United Nations Expert Group on Online Dispute Resolution established in 2002 and an invited founder member and current Secretary General of the Irish Delegation of the European Court of Arbitration. In 2007-2009 he was Legal Expert and Editor for the European Committee for Standardization's Workshop Agreement on the Standardization of Online Dispute Resolution Tools (CEN/ISS - WS/Stand-ODR) supported by the EU Commission. In 2008 he advised the Irish Attorney General on aspects of the Irish Arbitration Bill, 2008 which now, as the Arbitration Act 2010, governs domestic and international arbitration in the Republic of Ireland. He has also been consulted by the Law Reform Commission of Ireland and the Irish National Consumer Agency with regard to the development and use of ADR in Ireland. More recently he has consulted as expert to the European Commission DG SANCO on the development of Alternative Dispute Resolution for Consumer Disputes; and he is an invited observer member of the UNCITRAL (United Nations Commission on International Trade Law) Working Group III on Online Dispute Resolution. He is a Member of the London Court of International Arbitration, the Association Suisse de l'Arbitrage, the Society for Computers and Law, the Society of Legal Scholars, and the European Association of Banking and Financial Services Law. In 2015 he established the Irish Dispute Resolution Observatory (www.idro.ie) with the assistance of seed funding from UCD Research and input from the stakeholder bodies in Irish dispute resolution. In 2012 Brian was appointed by the Minister for Jobs Enterprise and Innovation to the statutory Company Law Review Group which is charged with reviewing and amending the companies acts. Brian chaired the group's sub-committee on the Review of the Rules governing Legal Representation of Companies before the Courts. In 2014 he was re-appointed by the Minister for a second term and he currently co-chairs, with the Registrar of Companies, the Group's standing sub-committee on Part 2 of the Companies Act 2014.Brian has been visiting lecturer variously at the University of Hannover, Germany (1993-1998), Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, USA (1998), De Paul University, Chicago, USA (1999 & 2006), and Stetson University, Florida, USA (2000), and he has also lectured at Boston University, Boston, USA (1995 & 1996) and Modul University Vienna (2013). He also teaches annually on the Duquesne University Summer Programme Ireland, and the Fordham University School of Law Summer Programme. He was visiting Fellow at the University of Geneva, Faculty of Law, in 2007, and he is a regular speaker on ADR and ODR at the ERA European Law Academy at Triers, Germany where he is a regular member of faculty on the Summer School in European Civil Litigation and a founding member of the new Summer Course on Mediation, 2014.In addition, as a qualified arbitrator and mediator, he has served as Arbitrator, as arbitrator's Legal Advisor, as party Legal Consultant in a number of domestic and international arbitrations and conciliations with total amounts in dispute in excess of Eur50,000,000; and he has served as expert witness in multi-million pound UK litigation. Consultancy projects include a programme of training in 2007 for Inquiry Members from the Office of the Irish Financial Regulator, and a review of award writing standards for appointment to the President's panel of the Society of Chartered Surveyors in 2010. In 2013 was made a member of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) panel of arbitrators for domain name disputes and he has arbitrated on disputes in the .IE registry. In February 2014 Brian was made a Chartered Arbitrator by the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, one of only a handful of arbitrators in the Republic of Ireland to achieve that status. Brian is former acting Director of the UCD Commerical Law Centre, and he served continuously as Assistant Dean, Associate Dean, and Vice Dean of the Faculty/School of Law from 1997 to 2007, and more recently also as Programme Director for the Bachelor of Civil Law Degree Programme, as well as, for many years, Chair of the Faculty Computer Policy Committee and a number of other Faculty/School committees. He is currently serving as Head of Career Development in the School. He is former chair of the Law School Web & IT Committee and a former alternate member of the School Executive Committee. He is Founder and Programme Director of the Diploma in Arbitration, which has been running since 1997 and which is accredited by the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators. He is former programme director of the Diploma in International Financial Services Law in the school which is run under the Law Society FINUAS network and which is supported by the Irish Government under the National Development Plan. He was, in addition, for many years the Senior Treasurer of the UCD Law Students Debating Society, and is a member of the UCD Student's Union Independent Appeals Board. He has also served as assessor for the IRCHSS on the Government of Ireland Scholarships panel, and as a member of the UCD QA/QI panel. He was also external examiner for a number of subjects at the School of Law at the University of Limerick, and he recently completed four years of service as external examiner for legal subjects at the Cork Institute of Technology. He is currently external examiner at the University of Hull, having previously served as extern at the National University of Ireland, University College Cork, School of Law; Leeds Beckett University; and Cork Institute of Technology; and as PhD external examiner at Queen's University, Belfast and Trinity College Dublin.

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Company and Commercial Law; Arbitration, Mediation and Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) including Online Dispute Resolution (ODR); Civil Procedure; Law of Credit and Security; Banking and Financial Services Law. Recent research includes a focus on Company Law and Corporate Governance, and Big Data in Online Dispute Resolution, and international research on Civil Procedure in the EU. Recent 8 doctoral supervision includes research on: Interim Measures in Support of International Arbitration and other International Proceedings; The Development of Islamic Finance (Funded by the Irish Research Council under the Government of Ireland Scholars Programme); User Attitudes to Mediation in Ireland; Professional Liability in Conventional and Islamic Insurance; A Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) perspective on Investment Treaty Disputes; the Efficacy of Legal Advice in the context of Guarantees. Previous PhD supervision also includes research on the Perfection of Security Interests in Real and Personal Property, funded by the IRCHSS under the Government of Ireland Scholars Programme. Other previous supervision has covered research on Commercial Agents; Online Dispute Resolution; and a variety of commercial law topics.