🎞 ARBI.CITY STUDIO: Interview with Gary Born about "The File"

Hello, and welcome to ARBI.CITY Studio. I am your host, Dmitri Evseev. Today's episode is a conversation with Gary Born, one of the world's most eminent arbitration practitioners and scholars, who has recently surprised many in the arbitration world by publishing a fictional thriller. Gary, it's delightful to see you and be at Wilmer's offices here in London.

Thanks so much for coming and having me on your show.

And we are here today to talk about your book, The File, which I know is out on Amazon. And I hope that anyone who watches this will pick it up and read it for themselves.

I just wanted to really hear your story of why you decided to write it and not just why the idea came to you, but how you actually decided that it's worth your investment of time. You obviously have so many other priorities, so many other things to do. How and when you decided that, you know what, I'm actually going to do it? And sort of what drove you to do this?

I'm not entirely sure what drove me to or lured me to do it. It was an idea that I'd had for a very long time. I think since the time I was clerking, actually immediately after law school, I had the idea of a spy thriller, like what I actually wrote with a plot that was not all that different. Obviously, in the intervening years, not much happened. But in the midst of long flights to Singapore, where one couldn't do much else, you can only look at cross-examination scripts and drafts of memorials for so long, I wanted to fill up the time. And I started, never having taken a creative writing course never having gone to one of these writer workshop things in Iowa or wherever I thought I'd just sit down and try to write a spy thriller and there was a lot of learning a lot of bumps along the way, but ultimately handwriting in students' notebooks of the kind that you buy at the drugstore for a pound 19 or whatever. I ended up with a stack of notebooks that was ultimately the first draft.

Wow. And how was the experience of writing? Obviously, in legal writing, it's all very structured and you have a foundation of facts to work with. Here you have a blank page and just your creativity as the limit. Was that tough? Was that liberating? How was it?

That's a very, very perceptive question because because in some senses, you'd think, since I spent most of my life writing, whether it's memorials and arbitration or treatises or what have you about international arbitration, international law, you'd think I was experienced with and maybe good at, or at least mediocre at, at writing writing and so writing something different wouldn't really be all that different but as your question suggests it's an utterly different world it is on the one hand extraordinarily liberating you don't have to look at procedural order number one and figure out what your format and page limits and font sizes and so forth are. You don't have an evidentiary record and authorities, the law that you have to, to hew pretty closely to. And in that sense, you're, you're free, which is obviously liberating at the same time, though, it is terrifying on some level, sitting down and just, even if you know, as one often does, what's supposed to go in this particular chapter, chapter 21, for example, you know what characters, you know where they are, you know what's supposed to happen in this chapter. There are a billion different ways that thing can happen. Is it daytime? Is it nighttime? that thing can happen? Is it daytime? Is it nighttime? Does she start? Does he start? What is the mood? And the process of translating the idea of a plot, which you've developed fairly well at that point, into what actually happens on the page is extraordinarily difficult, I found.

Yes, I mean, I've tried to dabble with creative writing and I found it harder, as you said, than actually legal writing in many respects and staring at the blank page aspect.

It's interesting too, because your idea morphs as you go along. As you fill in details, then you begin to question some of the framework as well. You change the details, obviously, a lot of times along the way, but you also sometimes, as you put flesh on the bones, you decide you want to change the bones here and there.

Right. So do you feel the story evolved a lot from kind of your original conception to when you finished it?

It did evolve a lot. I'm sure it happens with lots of writers. And I hope it evolved in a good way. It became the initial plot. Perhaps this is inevitable. The initial plot was fairly bare bones in a sense. And ultimately, both the plot and the characters, I think, became a fair bit more nuanced as one translated the basic idea into words on a page and dialogue, specific actions. It hopefully became more nuanced. My readers will have to decide that for themselves.

Right. Well, the book is called The File. And some people might think, oh, it has something to do with arbitration files or something like that. But I did a search and there's not a single mention of the word arbitration in the whole book.

There's no mention of arbitration.

I don't know if that was intentional or-

I don't think there's a mention of a judge. There's a little bit of law. There's some law about Swiss bank, numbered Swiss bank accounts, but it is about as far from arbitration as one could get. I'm not sure what that says about me.

Well, I mean, did you ever feel tempted to kind of put more of, you know, the professional experiences that you've had and some of the factual scenarios or things into the book?

So absolutely no temptation whatsoever to put something about arbitration. There actually are some, look, there are some thrillers out there about arbitrations. I'm not sure how thrilling you can make an arbitration, to be honest, but I was never tempted in the thriller. That said, I think the novel is full of bits and pieces of my life chopped out, whether it's individuals or geographical settings or events, they get chopped out and obviously repurposed and distorted or exaggerated or muted, as the case might be.

Interesting. Can you give us a couple of examples?

So the file is about a young woman, Sarah West, in her early 30s, a botany graduate student who, on an expedition in the heart of Africa, the ruins or the mountains which lie on the border between Uganda and Congo, chances upon the wreckage of a Nazi bomber that has gone undiscovered for 65, 70 years. On the bomber is the file, which of course has nothing to do with arbitration. What it has to do with though, is documents that tell you two things. One, how you find the secret wealth the Nazis squirreled away in the dying days of World War II in numbered Swiss bank accounts and how you get that vast wealth. And two, the names of the Nazis, most highly placed spies all around the world. The notion of the ruins or ease as being the setting came from after my clerkships and law school, I hitchhiked around Africa for about 12 months and spent a month, a very interesting month, in the Rwenzori Mountains. And as I wandered through, hiked through those mountains, which are among the most remote and forbidding mountains in the world, that's when the idea of this book came to me, the idea that in those mountains there could be almost anything and almost nobody would ever ever find it. Various individuals along the way, including the deputy director of the CIA, whose family name is in the list of the Nazi spies, also got plucked out of folks that I've known in the past and repurposed.

So interesting. Obviously, the book has nothing to do with arbitration, but I kept thinking that documents that were on the plane are sort of some of the ultimate bad documents. Hopefully, you never have in your case. But something that you never want to come out, or you never want anyone to ever see the light of day.

It's interesting. I never made that connection. So I didn't, to be honest, I didn't regard them as bad documents because they actually showed you the route to enormous wealth. And they also, when disclosed publicly, spoiler alert, I'll be careful here that I don't spoil the ending for people, but when disclosed publicly, they would bring truth, which otherwise might remain concealed. And at one point in the book, Sarah is asked, what is it she's after? And she says she wants truth and justice. And so oddly, I regarded the documents as good documents, the kind of documents you like to find during disclosure.

Yes, so from the other side.

Yes, from the other side. But the documents prove not to be entirely good for Sarah because they lead to her being chased through first the ruins or is in the Libyan desert, then up the boot of Italy to Zurich in Switzerland by various evil characters who want the documents for themselves.

Well, we can at least agree that we can label them hot documents, right?

Hot documents, absolutely. These would have gone on the hot documents list.

Right. So the book reads very much like also a movie. I mean, I keep sort of visualizing the plot and kind of the actions. actions obviously that is the genre of a spy thriller but did you have a sort of a film adaptation in mind when you were writing it was that sort of in your in your head when you were writing?

So i really am a complete novice -- was a complete novice -- at this maybe i'm a touch less so at this point. I had no conception that there might be a film adaptation or something of the sort. I just wanted to write a fun, exciting spy thriller. That said, my publisher, who's much more sophisticated than I am, has engaged a script writer. And if the stars aligned, they probably won't, but if the stars align, then there would indeed be a film adaptation. Sarah could come to life before your eyes.

Wow, I'll watch that space for sure. So obviously in this kind of genre, storytelling is really important. The plot is sort of the key that drives things forward. To what extent do you think that applies in an arbitration? What role does storytelling play in an arbitration proceeding? And how do you think about that?

Yeah, I think that's another really, really good question. And I do think storytelling is hugely important, both in an arbitration, but also a litigation, frankly, even in a settlement discussion or perhaps a contract negotiation. You need a narrative that grips people, that is believable. Of course, in arbitration litigation, you're tied to what the facts really are, what the evidentiary record before you is. But there are a thousand different ways to tell a story based on the documents, based on the witness testimony. And to some extent, as a lawyer, you can also build the record. You can put into the record from which the decision will be made things that can support your narrative or undermine the counterparty's narrative. It is, therefore, I think, very much a form of storytelling. It's a different form. They're more constrained, but it's a form of storytelling. I think we all resonate to stories. Just because it's not a spy thriller you submit to the tribunal doesn't mean that there's not a story in there.

Right, right. So I was very curious. I went on Amazon and I checked the reviews before speaking to you. And I scrolled down to the lowest rated review that actually had a comment attached to it. It was a three-star review. And I was thinking, okay, well, I wonder what this person said. Interesting. And there were a three-star review. And I was thinking, okay, well, I wonder what this person said. And there were two comments in that review. One was that occasionally this American author included some British slang in the mix, which must have been things that obviously you've spent a long time in London. And I imagine, at least for me, having an American spending a long time in London, a lot of things I don't even notice that are Britishisms that an American might potentially notice. That was a minor quibble. And the other one was, I think it was still not a negative comment. Was it about the sort of deus ex machina moments? And the reviewer said there were not many in the book. There were only a couple, but that reviewer felt that, you know, in your next book, there should be none.

So I'm not sure about either of those. I certainly did not put any intended Britishisms in it. And I think like lots of Americans living in London, you get faced with a sort of quandary. Should I say sidewalk or pavement? Should I say trunk or boot? I'm pretty scrupulous about sticking to my authentic origins, even if I know that they're a bit out of place. It's conceivable because there were a couple scenes set in London that a character used one of those. Although to be honest, I don't recall that at all. With respect to sort of pulling a rabbit out of the hat, I tried to avoid that. I didn't learn that in creative writing, but I learned it from reading other people's books. I'm sure there's a whole lot that could be improved in it. I'm sure the three-star reviewer, if there was a one-star reviewer, I'm sure they would have spotted additional mistakes. But the good news is that there's another novel on the way where hopefully I can correct whatever mistakes were in the file. The new one is called The Priest, and it's spoiler alert again. It's about instead of having a feminine heroine, This one is male. In some senses, he has a lot of similarities to Sarah, a lone novice, not somebody trained as a spy who suddenly gets thrust into the world of high espionage and is left on their own to cope with their wits, their bravery, whatnot, with highly skilled and experienced adversaries. Great. Well, thank you. That sounds like we have another exciting book to look forward to. And I have to mention that all the other reviews were much higher rate than Amazon. So hopefully the audience will pick up the book and make up their own mind.

Thank you very much for your time. I know that you have a busy day ahead of you as always. So thank you so much for speaking to our ARBI.CITY viewers. And we hope to see you again on our show.

Thank you so much Dmitri.