Draft Interim Measures Request

Skill: ICC Emergency Interim Measures

1. Subject-matter triage

• Treat the application as time-sensitive and document-driven: extract the facts, chronology, and relief sought from the supporting materials before drafting.
• Identify whether the requested measures are directed at parties bound by the arbitration agreement, or whether any relief implicates a non-party that may require a different procedural route.
• Confirm whether the application must be framed as emergency relief before constitution of the tribunal, and whether any parallel court relief, seat-based relief, or conservatory measure should be mentioned as complementary or fallback support.

2. Failure modes the skill is correcting

• Drafts a generic urgency narrative without anchoring the request in the governing ICC emergency arbitrator mechanism and the seat’s curial law.
• Assumes the emergency decision-maker can bind a person who is not a party to the arbitration agreement, leaving the enforceability problem unresolved.
• Seeks broad restraint without tying the requested measures to the threatened harm and without addressing proportionality.
• Omits or underdevelops a cross-undertaking in damages where that undertaking is strategically important to the relief sought.
• States the merits position in conclusory terms without connecting it to the record evidence and the controlling legal standard.
• Fails to use the supporting documents with evidentiary precision, especially where the chronology, forensic findings, or financial exposure drive urgency.
• Lists relief in vague categories rather than drafting concrete, order-ready interim measures.

3. Legal frameworks / domain conventions that apply

• ICC emergency arbitrator framework: frame the request under the ICC Rules provisions governing emergency relief before the tribunal is constituted, and tie the application to urgency, prima facie entitlement, and the need for prompt provisional protection.
• Seat and curial law: identify the arbitration seat and the applicable arbitration statute or procedural law, then align the requested relief with the local standard for interim measures and any available court support.
• Interim relief essentials: address urgency, serious risk of harm, adequacy of damages, arguable merits, and proportionality/balance of convenience, using the controlling legal vocabulary for the seat where relevant.
• Non-party limitation: if the target of relief is not bound by the arbitration agreement, acknowledge the limitation expressly and adjust the requested relief, parties, or forum accordingly.
• Competition or restraint-of-trade issues: if the dispute concerns a restrictive covenant, confidentiality, solicitation, or similar restraint, test the relief against the governing contract law and any mandatory law that may affect enforceability.
• Cross-undertaking in damages: where the relief sought is intrusive, preserve credibility by offering a sensible undertaking and noting the applicant’s ability to honor it if that assists the application.
• Proportionality and tailoring: ask only for relief that preserves the status quo or prevents the threatened harm, and connect each order to a concrete risk shown by the evidence.
• Controlling authority discipline: for every legal proposition, cite the governing ICC rule, arbitration statute, treaty article, case authority, or other recognized source rather than stating conclusions abstractly.

4. Analytical scaffolds

• Start by identifying the arbitration reference, parties, seat, governing rules, and the procedural status that makes emergency relief available.
• Build the jurisdiction section around the emergency arbitrator’s authority, the seat’s interim-measures regime, and any limits on the tribunal’s power over third parties.
• Assemble the factual chronology from the supporting documents in time order, using the forensic record, communications, transaction history, and threatened-event evidence.
• State the merits case as a prima facie or arguable claim, with each key proposition tied to a cited document or record excerpt and the controlling legal basis.
• Explain urgency by linking the threatened act or dissipation risk to the timing of the application and the practical inability of later relief to cure the harm.
• Explain irreparable or inadequately compensable harm by describing the concrete business, competitive, reputational, or evidentiary injury likely to occur.
• Analyze balance of convenience by comparing the harm to the applicant if relief is refused against the burden on the respondent if relief is granted.
• If multiple parties, contracts, time periods, or threatened acts are in play, enumerate them first and then analyze each one separately rather than collapsing them into a single narrative.
• Use the record carefully: identify the type of forensic material, the source of the information, and the specific proposition each item supports.
• Where the application depends on financial exposure, quote the figures from the source materials without inventing new calculations, and use them only to support the proportionality or harm analysis.
• If a non-party is implicated, separate the requested relief against bound parties from any broader practical steps that may need a court or separate proceeding.
• End the draft by converting the analysis into draftable relief language that can be lifted into the application.

5. Vertical / structural / temporal relationships

• Respect the sequencing of emergency arbitration: establish the procedural basis first, then merits and urgency, then tailoring of relief, then any undertaking, then the proposed order.
• Where the facts involve a threatened future act, anchor the chronology to the latest safe date and explain why relief is needed before that date.
• If the evidence spans multiple sources or custodians, keep the chain of custody or extraction path visible so the record remains credible.
• If there is a relationship between a primary counterparty and a third party, describe the relationship carefully without assuming the third party is automatically bound by the arbitration agreement.
• If parallel proceedings or court options exist, explain whether they are additive, alternative, or reserved, and avoid suggesting inconsistent procedural paths.

6. Output structure conventions

• Use a formal application style suitable for filing or adaptation into a filing-ready document.
• Begin with the parties, arbitration reference, seat, and request for emergency relief.
• Include a jurisdiction and procedural basis section identifying the ICC mechanism and the seat-based law framework.
• Set out a concise factual background with a clean chronology and cited evidentiary support.
• Follow with legal submissions addressing prima facie case, urgency, harm, proportionality, and any non-party issue.
• Add a separate section for any restraints-of-trade or competition-law response if the requested measures touch those topics.
• Include a distinct cross-undertaking section if relief strategy or local practice makes it material.
• Conclude with a proposed orders section that states the interim measures in concrete, operative terms.
• Keep the requests narrow, enforceable, and tied to the harm shown; avoid aspirational language.
• Use the supporting documents to surface verbatim quotations only when necessary and only as short excerpts that substantiate a critical point.