Daniel Boon
What is your current role, or what are you working on?
I'm currently an associate in the International Arbitration team at Stephenson Harwood's London office. I work on a range of arbitration-related matters, ranging from your classic commercial arbitration to investor-state disputes and enforcement-related matters. In fact, the latter is one of the few times I will have a matter before the English Courts, often challenging attempts to enforce an award. I'm also fortunate that my team is sector-agnostic. As a result, I've worked on matters in all areas, such as oil and gas disputes, shareholder disputes, and ISDA swaps matters. A lot of my work relates to East and West Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia, so close(ish) to home!
What is your proudest achievement?
I sat as tribunal secretary in an LCIA arbitration where the partner in my team was the chairperson. Being involved in the tribunal members' discussions was eye-opening. It really gives you an idea of what tribunals are looking out for when they are faced with competing positions and difficult applications by the parties. It was this insight that really guided my drafting and strategy when, in another arbitration where my team acted as counsel, we were faced with an interim application where it was alleged that we and/or our client manipulated disclosure documents (vehemently denied!). From experiencing the deliberations of the tribunal in the case where I sat as tribunal secretary, my gut feeling was that our response to this challenge should not be overly defensive, but simply to explain in a fair, clinical way why the allegation raised by the other side was unsustainable and based on unsound inference. Fortunately, the partner on the matter agreed with me, and we ended up defeating the application, successfully defending our honour against a major firm.
There are now 25 hours in a day! How would you spend your extra hour?
Having thought long and hard, I think I would spend the extra hour learning about legal tech and how firms can adopt and drive forward innovation. For context, I'm a member of my firm's Innovation Network and we spend a lot of time figuring out how GenAI can help us and our clients with efficiency and costs. The technical part of all this is truly fascinating, and more importantly, fun.
If you weren't a lawyer, what would you do?
My parents would want me to say a doctor, but I think I'd tend towards a chef. I've watched The Bear (a TV series) and yes, it glorifies being a chef, but the experimentation and chance to create something completely new sounds very attractive. It's also amazing to be able to recreate a different feeling of warmth and nostalgia for different people just by cooking fresh ingredients in varying ways. And I also need to learn to make good Sarawak laksa because it's non-existent in the UK and my cravings flare up too often!
Your favourite food haunt is...?
This is niche. I'm from Kuching, Malaysia. Close to my childhood home is a house that is now a coffee shop. You can see me joyously enjoying Sarawak laksa at the coffee shop in the picture. The owner used to run a hardware store out of his house, but fortunately for me, he decided a coffee shop was more profitable. It's now the place where everyone in the area and those who are commuting in to work stop by for their famous soft-boiled egg, perfectly brewed coffee and succulent popiah. Always the first stop when I'm home.