Brandon Malone

“I needed a defibrillator – I’m told, I can’t remember anything about it – because I dropped dead,” he says. “There was nothing wrong with my heart or blood pressure, it was just a block, and I just fell over and was out for a bit. They had one of those machines in the hotel I was in and they managed to bring me back.”

Since making a full recovery Malone, who in addition to being an adjudicator and arbitrator recently joined Faculty as a member of Ampersand, has donated a public-access defibrillator to Penicuik Rugby Club “as a sign of my appreciation for being alive”. He has also set about raising funds so more machines can be placed in public places because, he says, “they should be everywhere”.

“I wanted to do a fundraiser so that more of these life-saving machines can be made publicly available,” he says. “I thought about what an appropriate challenge to raise funds might be. Push-ups are well and good, but when it comes down to it, there aren’t many tougher challenges for a 53-year-old member of the undead community like me than playing a season of rugby, so that’s what I’m going to do. That’s not to say that I am going to play every single game – my diary won’t allow that, but I’ll do my best.”

His diary is, indeed, a busy one. Having studied law in Aberdeen, Malone’s career began in private practice in that city, where he spent five years working for Peterkins before moving to Edinburgh for a role at Bell & Scott. It was there that he began specialising in construction law, which led him into arbitration and becoming the founding chair of the Scottish Arbitration Centre. After 30 years as a solicitor, eight of them as name partner at Brandon Malone & Company, he called to the English bar in 2021 and called in Scotland the following year. Now, in addition to taking instructions at the Scottish and English bars, he arbitrates, adjudicates and mediates in a number of different jurisdictions, including Dubai.

It’s busy and varied legal practice, but one he says he has largely fallen into.

“When I came to Edinburgh to work at Bell & Scott I got asked to specialise in construction law and if you’re doing construction you end up doing a lot of alternative dispute resolution,” he says. “It was around the time adjudication came in and I got involved with the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, doing their events, and because of that I got asked by the Law Society [of Scotland] to get involved with the Scottish government when it was trying to set up an international dispute resolution centre.

“That was 2010. There wasn’t really a firm proposal for that so I put together a proposal for what became the Scottish Arbitration Centre. I did that and then I chaired its board for many years. That got me into the world of international arbitration. I thought it was better to get into that kind of work if I was trying to sell Scotland as a place to do it in. It takes a long time to build a practice in that area, but that’s what I do these days.”

Even studying law in the first place was something of an accident for Malone, whose schooling was interrupted when his family moved from Aberdeen to the US when he was on the cusp of starting secondary school.

“I was in the US from age 11 to 17 because my dad worked as a chef and got asked to help open a restaurant in Florida,” he recalls. “It was interesting. It was rural Florida so not Disney World or Miami Vice. Weirdly, it was a place called Inverness, but it was a solid fish out of water experience. It was the whole thing you see in films and on TV – the American high school experience is all true.

“I loved debating and arguing but I was going to do art or drama then my dad suggested law and I thought it would be challenging and stimulating so I thought I’d give it a go. I went to Banff Academy for my last year at school – I had to come back because my visa had expired and I was going to be in Aberdeen but my grandmother died so I went to live with other relatives in Macduff. I ended up going to school in Banff for six months then went and graduated in the US after the summer then came back. It was discombobulating. When you go to Florida as an Aberdonian you are an oddity. When you go to Banff as a Florida boy you are an oddity.

“I wish I’d had some grand plan [for a career in the law], but no. It was different days – you could do your degree and everyone got a job.”

Grand plan or not, Malone has played a pivotal role in developing Scotland into a key arbitration centre. Prior to the passing of the Arbitration (Scotland) Act in 2010 adjudication was the main forum for construction disputes. Malone says that was popular because it meant parties could get a decision in record time, but because adjudication is not financially binding parties would often want to take the matter further.

“Often cases in court are challenges to an adjudication because a party doesn’t like the outcome,” he says. “Adjudications are quite short – they’re meant to be 28 days – and that doesn’t really allow much time for the examination of the case. They call it rough justice, getting a decision that’s rushed out whereas with litigation and arbitration you get the time to actually go through all the matters properly and consider the evidence to come to a fully reasoned decision.”

Prior to the establishment of the Scottish Arbitration Centre, which Malone remains a director of, the legislation around arbitration was, he says “pretty dysfunctional”. Since 2010 the centre has “developed it into an arbitral institution with its own rules”. Having established itself, the priority now is to turn Scotland into an arbitration destination of choice, something Malone says will not just be good for the legal profession but for the economy too.

“London, Paris, New York, Geneva and Singapore get a lot of business and many places around the world are trying to establish themselves as an arbitration centre because a lot of economic benefits come with it,” he says. “If you have a three-week hearing you have 20 or 30 professionals staying there, paying for a venue, and they spend on taxis, hotels, restaurants. In 2022 we had the biggest arbitration event – the Congress of the ICCA [International Council for Commercial Arbitration] – in Edinburgh. Around 1,400 to 1,500 lawyers descended on Scotland and that was worth millions to the Scottish economy.

“In Scotland, arbitration has definitely become more attractive following the 2010 act. For alternative dispute resolution it’s the most popular option because if you’re talking about international trade or contracts between parties from different countries neither wants to be subject to decisions from the other party’s court. In that kind of situation they will go somewhere neutral. We hope Edinburgh will increasingly be that place.”