Dan Tan Law

The US boutique provides clients with international law firm experience without the cost

This boutique was launched by former Latham & Watkins lawyer Dan Tan in 2011. He now works from New York and San Francisco.

A member of the bars of New York, California, the District of Columbia, Singapore and England and Wales, Tan has a decade of arbitration experience at three leading firms: Latham & Watkins and O’Melveny & Myers in New York, and Lovells in London. In addition, he teaches international arbitration at Harvard Law School and at the Singapore Management University School of Law, where he is on the adjunct faculty. As of 2013, he is a professor at Stanford Law School where he teaches international investment law.

He is also a member of the ICC task force on arbitration involving states or state entities.

Tan initially brought in three other international arbitration specialists when starting the firm: Cody Constable, formerly of Waesche Sheinbaum & O’Regan in New York; Martin Endicott, formerly of the international arbitration and financial litigation group at Lovells and the World Bank in Washington, DC; and Yousuf Aftab from Canadian law firm Torys.Of those three, only Endicott remains with Dan Tan Law. However, the practice has since acquired Jennie Lin, a graduate of Harvard who has represented clients in ICC and LCIA arbitrations.

Tan says the thinking behind the project is “to establish a flexible platform capable of delivering specialist advice and representation on cost-effective and value-driven terms”. He says the firm will tailor the service offered – as well as the rates – to the client. Those who have worked with him pay tribute to his impressive attention to detail and strategy and “easy to work with” approach. “Clients love him,” one former Latham partner told GAR.

Network

In 2013, the boutique established a presence in Singapore, operating a fully licensed affiliate Singaporean law firm, JLC Advisers, which is headed by Shem Khoo, a former partner at Rajah & Tann. Tan says they are the only firms in the United States and Singapore respectively to focus exclusively on international arbitration.

Who uses it?

One of the world’s largest electronics companies, Future Electronics, is a client. The firm also acts for companies from the United States and Canada, Singapore and Hong Kong, central Europe, Russia and China in arbitrations under ICDR, ICC and LCIA rules seated in London and New York (one case is worth over US$30 million).

Track record

The firm reports a favourable ruling on liability for its client, a southeast Asian company, in a US$500 million UNCITRAL claim against an Asian state entity (White & Case is on the other side). The case is being administered by SIAC.

The firm has a track record for successfully settling disputes. In its first six months of action, the firm settled an AAA arbitration in California – reportedly for 10 times what the client was previously offered to settle the case. The firm also settled a dispute on its client’s terms against a well-known US pharmaceutical company.

It is also bringing a claim against a central Asian country in respect of a US$300 million investment and another against a Central American company in relation to the expropriation of a resort worth US$195 million.

The firm also successfully defended listed US and Canadian companies in an ICDR arbitration seated in New York. Claims by Singaporean parties for more than US$35 million were fully dismissed.

Recent events

Dan Tan Law is now representing a Turkish contractor in an ICSID claim exceeding US$150 million against a Middle Eastern country.

The firm is also involved with two ICC claims over intellectual property seated in Singapore and another ICC arbitration in São Paulo relating to a US$10 million claim over environmental cleanup costs.

In addition, the firm is working alongside Fangda Partners to act for Chinese citizens, companies and British Virgin Islands and Cayman entities in a pending HKIAC arbitration against a major Hong Kong private equity fund for fraud and breach of contract. The claims total is around US$25 million.

It is also representing the Palestinian Water Authority in one of the first UNCITRAL arbitrations under Palestinian law.

Client comment

Tan Chuan Thye, partner of Stamford Law Corporation, describes Dan Tan as a “tireless arbitration lawyer who does not let significantly different time zones faze him.” He says that Tan was “invaluable” on matters of New York substantive law and had “innovative” ways of presenting complex ideas to a multilingual and multi-jurisdictional tribunal.

Vaibhav Shetty, manager of Indfrag, relates how Dan Tan obtained a settlement on the company’s terms that still enabled it to work with the opposing party again: “Dan created a situation where they [the opposing party] believed we weren’t willing to settle at all and there was one moment where their lawyer mentioned that we need to think of some compensation for them. Dan immediately… pulled the other party’s lawyer aside and a few minutes later he [the other party’s lawyer] was back advising his client to settle on the figure that we wanted in the first place!”