Arbitration disputes. Can one do without a lawyer?

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In Russia, entrepreneurs and business people work with contracts, in an environment of constant risks and bureaucracy, practically every day. It's not easy for businesses: unfortunately, that's their specificity.

In some cases, business, or to be more precise, the risks in entrepreneurial activity, can lead to a dispute, and the dispute can turn into a full-fledged court litigation.

In this article, we will discuss arbitration disputes and whether an entrepreneur can defend their rights themselves, without resorting to the help of a lawyer.

The arbitration process is a judicial process in which the parties, as a rule, are economic entities (individual entrepreneurs and legal entities).

The most frequent disputes in the arbitration court are debt collection disputes; disputes arising from the execution and termination of contracts; company bankruptcy.

The arbitration process differs from the civil process. Below are some differences:

The judicial procedure is "on paper": the arbitration process is in fact based on written evidence, unlike the civil process, where oral explanations, witness testimonies, etc., are common.
The judge's internal conviction in the arbitration process is more predictable, again due to the "paper nature" of the judicial procedure, than in courts of general jurisdiction.
The judge's actions are more limited in the arbitration process, as the participants in the litigation are assumed to be professional market participants. For example, the judge cannot go beyond the claims, reduce the penalty on their own. At the same time, in civil proceedings, judges practice this.

Answering the question: can an entrepreneur do without a lawyer in an arbitration dispute? We answer that they can, but under certain conditions:

have the desire to understand the law and judicial practice in the category of the current dispute;
have time to prepare the legal position, draft procedural documents, send them to the necessary persons, and participate in court hearings;
be confident that the dispute is not "complex" (it is unlikely that this can be understood without a lawyer);
fully accept all the risks of independently conducting the case, taking into account that the entrepreneur, most of the time, is not a professional lawyer.

A frequent mistake, an example from practice: an entrepreneur independently participated in an arbitration process in the court of first instance. As a result, the court denied the claims. The case initially implied a victory if the entrepreneur had attached the necessary documents they had, but for some reason decided not to attach them.

After losing, the entrepreneur decided to "give up" self-activity and hand over the case to lawyers to accompany the appeal instance.

However, for lawyers in such a situation, it is much more difficult to conduct the case, since, as a rule, the court does not accept new evidence in the court of appeal.

The opposite situation also occurs: the entrepreneur attached documents to the case materials, but it was categorically forbidden to attach them.

Conclusion: if you want to immerse yourself in court battles on your own, without the full accompaniment of a lawyer, minimize your risks: send the documents to the lawyer and arrange a consultation on determining the legal position within the framework of the case or ask them to draft a claim.