Reed Smith’s Niyati Ahuja interviews Eric Ives – Attorney Advisor, International at the U.S. Department of Commerce, Office of the General Counsel’s Commercial Law Development Program – about his global work in advancing Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR). Eric shares his journey from private practice to public service, discussing the unique challenges of adapting international ADR standards to diverse markets in Central Asia, Pakistan and the MENA. ----more---- Transcript: Intro: Welcome to Disputes in Perspective, a Reed Smith podcast. This podcast series will discuss disputes-related trends, hot topics, and developments occurring in the global legal landscape, and hopefully provide you with some helpful insights and practical tips. If you have any questions about any of the episodes, please feel free to contact our speakers.  Niyati: I’m Niyati Ahuja, Senior Associate in the New York office of Reed Smith. I work in the Global Commercial Disputes Group and International Arbitration Group. I'm qualified to practice law in New York and India. I do both investor state and commercial arbitration work, as well as some white-collar investigations and commercial litigation work in the New York Court. Today, we have with us Eric Ives. Eric is an attorney advisor international at the U.S. Department of Commerce's Commercial Law Development Program, where he leads the agency's ADR development work in Central Asia, Pakistan, and MENA, and works bilaterally with Uzbekistan on finance and digital trade law. Prior to joining the CLDP, Mr. Ives was an associate in White & Case’s International Arbitration Group in New York, where he worked on international commercial and investor state arbitrations. He advised corporate and sovereign clients across a range of industries, including insurance, pharmaceutical, telecommunications, and post-M&A disputes under all major institutional rules. Thank you so much, Eric, for joining us today and sharing your career path, what you’ve discovered, because you did make a switch from a big law firm to the government. So I'm very, very interested in what you have to say about all the questions we have for you.  Eric: Niyati, thank you so much for having me. I'll just say briefly at the outset that I'm here solely in my personal capacity and anything that we touch on today is solely my own opinion and doesn't constitute the opinion of the US Department of Commerce or the Commercial Law Development Program as an agency. And it's great to be here on the Reed Smith podcast. Looking forward to our discussion today.  Niyati: Getting right into it, Eric, tell me, could you share a little bit more about your role as an attorney advisor with the Commercial Law Development Program?  Eric: Yes, absolutely. I mean, as much as you can put in a bio, the work at CLDP is far ranging, covers the globe, and it covers pretty much every area of commercial legal development. The agency is about 30 years old. It was founded post-fall of the USSR to sort of create favorable investment environments for post-Soviet states. Now, 30 years on, that work has expanded to, well, around the world and covers pretty much every single area you can think of. In particular, coming from an ADR background, I focus on ADR law development in Central Asia, Pakistan, and MENA. So that's contract enforcement rights, and that sometimes veers into rule of law and access to justice issues as well. Arbitration, mediation, I think we often think of them as commercial topics, but they also touch public rights as well. And so it's actually been quite nice to see ADR in these new circumstances. Aside from alternative dispute resolution, I also cover finance law and digital trade issues in Uzbekistan on a bilateral basis. Central Asia is incredibly interesting to work in. It sits the middle of a lot of different regulatory approaches, and they're really choosing their way forward. So CLDP tries to show them what the American experience ha