What the major law firms' 2026 arbitration forecasts agree on, and why the agreement itself is the interesting part. Background Every January, a cluster of major international law firms publish forward-looking notes on arbitration trends for the year ahead. Read individually, each is a piece of client-facing commentary. Read together, the 2026 crop — from Freshfields, Cleary Gottlieb, Baker McKenzie, Charles River Associates, A&O Shearman and Crowell & Moring, among others —

There is no US-Russia BIT in force and Russia never ratified the ICSID Convention. Exxon's Sakhalin-1 claim shows what is left when the treaty layer is simply absent.