School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet)

This year’s Intercollegiate Negotiation and Arbitration Competition (INC) in Tokyo has been won by Team Australia – 21 students from 9 Australian universities. Team Australia won the competition outright, as well as the Squire Patton Boggs Award for the highest scoring team in English-language Negotiation. In an historic first, Team Australia also won the Herbert Smith Freehills Award the highest scoring team in Arbitration, in Japanese. That award was presented by Team Australia alumna Eriko Kadota, dispute resolution Associate in the HSF Tokyo Office.

Team Australia was coached by Tim Magarry (Team Australia ’17), who graduates with a JD from Australian National University this year, and a team of alumni and mentors led by Professor Veronica Taylor (ANU School of Regulation & Global Governance), who has coached the team since 2014.

The INC is a unique and gruelling international competition. The competition problem every year involves a simulated arbitration of a transnational commercial disputes and then a second day of negotiating a transnational joint venture. In this year’s problem, the students navigated an international sporting competition marred by heat waves, doping scandals and no-show elite athletes, and then had to negotiate the development of elite athlete training technology, facilities and an international event program.

Team Australia has competed in the INC since its inception 17 years ago and has won several times, including in 2007 and 2016. They were runners-up in 2017.

Apart from more than 20 of Japan’s top law schools, the contest also features student teams from Hong Kong, Singapore, Mongolia and Korea. Team Australia is supported by funding from New Colombo Plan Scholarships in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and by mentoring contributions from lawyers at Ashurst, Baker & McKenzie, Colt Technology Services, Freshfields, and Herbert Smith Freehills. It is an initiative of the Australian Network for Japanese Law (ANJeL) (a consortium including ANU College of Law, University of Sydney Law School and Melbourne Law School) and led by the ANU School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet).

The 2018 winning team was:

(Japanese language) Yukino Kanazawa (ANU); Nanami Nishihara (ANU/Keio); Sebastian King (ANU); Veronica Oh (ANU); Scanlon Williams (ANU); (English Language) Dylan Sherman (Sydney); Monty Allen (ANU) John Lidbetter (UNSW); May Yang (Sydney); Bethany McGhie (Wollongong); Sean Tran (UQ); Caleb Shepherd (USC); Jacqueline Song (ANU); Aashritha Kumar (Monash); Philippa Cordi (UTS); Jack Donnelly (UQ) Nico Kunz (Melbourne); Katherine Arditto (ANU;  ; Alex Dehn (Monash); Shani Horii-Watson (ANU); Kate Cincotta (UQ).