Introduction
After four successful years as the Asialaw Dispute Resolution Forum, the ceremony is being rebranded as the Benchmark Litigation Asia-Pacific Awards 2019 (in association with Asialaw). The Benchmark Litigation Awards launched in New York over eight years ago and has since expanded into ceremonies in Toronto, San Francisco and London.
The Benchmark Litigation Asia-Pacific Awards will be held on Thursday, September 19 at the Island Shangri-La in Hong Kong.
In previous years, there has been a dedicated submission process. For efficiency (and following law firm feedback), this year the majority of the shortlist and winner decisions will be made using the existing research for the Benchmark Litigation Asia-Pacific directory. The latest issue of the directory covered the calendar year of 2018, so firms who participated in research for that product are invited to submit extra information on cases which closed in January to June 2019.
Firms who did not participate in the directory research are invited to submit key cases from July 2018 to June 2019 inclusive. This includes firms from Australia and New Zealand, which were not covered in the latest issue of the directory, but will be included in the 2019 awards (and likely next year’s directory).
Please submit through our AWARDS SUBMISSION PORTAL.
The awards submission deadline is Thursday, 20 June.
The shortlist for these awards will be made public on July 11 2019.
Overall guidance
The awards will be judged according to:
- Innovation (Did the advice the firm gave show something more than the straightforward answer that is commonly used?)
- Complexity (Did the matter address legal issues that were out of the ordinary and what ingenuity did the firm show to solve them?)
- Impact (What impact did the advice have on the client? For example, did it help them win an unprecedented judgement in court?)
For work completed between July and December 2018, the information has been captured in the Benchmark Litigation Asia-Pacific directory. Firms have been encouraged to send supplementary information for matters closed between January and June 2019 inclusive.
Firms and lawyers of the year
These awards will recognise the best litigation/dispute resolution firms and lawyers in each of the 12 jurisdictions* covered by Benchmark Litigation Asia-Pacific directory. It is aimed at those who have displayed outstanding achievement in advising clients on local law matters, across a range of practice areas. There will be shortlists for the best firms in each jurisdiction and the best individual lawyers in each jurisdiction.
- Australia*
- China
- Hong Kong
- India
- Indonesia
- Japan
- Malaysia
- New Zealand*
- Philippines
- Singapore
- South Korea
- Taiwan
- Thailand
- Vietnam
* Australia and New Zealand are not currently covered by the Benchmark Litigation Asia-Pacific directory, but are included for the awards. They are likely to be added to the next issue of the directory.
Practice area categories
The awards will also create shortlists for the best lawyers and the best law firms in the following 11 practice areas:
- Commercial and transactions
- Competition/antitrust
- Construction
- Government and regulatory
- Insolvency
- Intellectual property
- International arbitration
- Labour and employment
- Shipping
- Tax
- White-collar crime
Editor’s choice awards
Impact cases of the year
Benchmark Litigation Asia-Pacific’s editors will convene to select a number of cases which had a jurisdictional, or even regional, impact between July 2018 and June 2019 inclusive. There will be no shortlists for this category. All law firms and in-house on the deals selected will be honoured at the ceremony.
Boutique firm of the year
To be eligible for this award, editors will analyse the recent work of any firm that is set up purely to cover litigation/dispute resolution.
Individual awards
Editors will refer to research and interviews to select rising stars (those in the early years of their careers) and hall of fame lawyers to be honoured on the evening.