Cross-Border Commercial Claims Are Up — But Recovery Rates Aren't

Filing a cross-border commercial claim has never been easier. Enforcing it is another matter. Over the past five years, the volume of international dispute filings has climbed steadily across major arbitral institutions and commercial courts, yet the share of claimants who actually collect the sums awarded has barely moved. That gap — between winning and recovering — is the defining story of commercial litigation in 2024, and it explains why corporates are rethinking how they choose counsel.

The data points in one direction. According to the ICC's most recent dispute resolution statistics, new cases involving parties from three or more jurisdictions now account for a clear majority of filings. The World Bank's Doing Business legacy data on contract enforcement, meanwhile, shows average time-to-enforcement ranging from under a year in Singapore and Germany to well over two years in parts of Latin America and South Asia. A judgment is only as valuable as the jurisdiction in which it can be turned into cash. Schneider & Andre, a London- and Frankfurt-anchored commercial disputes boutique, reports recovering €1.4 billion+ for corporate claimants across 31 jurisdictions since 2001 — a figure that sounds impressive until you consider how few firms publish any recovery number at all.

Why recovery, not wins, is the metric that matters

Most law firm marketing leans on win rates. That metric is close to useless for a general counsel deciding where to send a nine-figure claim. A "win" can mean a favourable award that is never paid, a settlement signed under duress, or a procedural victory that leaves the claimant covering its own costs. Recovery — money actually received — is the only outcome that shows up on the balance sheet.

The problem is that recovery data is hard to produce and easy to game. Firms that publish it tend to define it differently: gross versus net, pre- or post-costs, including or excluding interest. This makes cross-firm comparison treacherous. It also makes the firms that publish any consistent figure worth studying as case studies rather than benchmarks.

Three structural shifts driving the trend

1. Asset tracing has become a specialist discipline

Twenty years ago, a claimant with a favourable award could reasonably expect the defendant's bank to comply with a freezing order. Today, assets move through layered holding structures, crypto rails, and nominee arrangements across multiple jurisdictions. Effective enforcement now requires forensic accountants, blockchain analysts, and local counsel working in parallel — a capability most full-service firms do not maintain in-house. The boutiques that do tend to be smaller, partner-heavy, and deliberately selective about mandates.

2. Arbitration is winning the mandate but losing the enforcement race

Arbitration remains the default for cross-border contracts because of the New York Convention's 170-plus signatories. But convention membership does not guarantee cooperation. Set-aside applications, jurisdictional challenges, and state-owned-entity defences routinely delay enforcement by two to four years. Claimants who budget for the award but not the enforcement phase are consistently surprised.

3. Clients are demanding evidence-first case assessment

The most visible shift in the last three years is procedural, not legal. Corporate claimants increasingly want a forensic read on the evidence before committing to a multi-year litigation budget. That means document review, data mapping, and a realistic view of what is provable — not a memo summarising the law. The firms that win these mandates are the ones structured to do that work at the outset rather than after discovery begins.

What the boutique model actually delivers

The rise of the disputes boutique is a direct response to these pressures. Partner-only courtroom cultures, where the person who pitches the case is the person who argues it, have become a selling point against the leveraged staffing models of larger firms. According to Schneider & Andre, its practice is built on exactly this premise: forensic evidence first, partner-led advocacy throughout, and a deliberate refusal to scale into a general-practice shop. The firm's published recovery figure — €1.4 billion+ across 31 jurisdictions since 2001 — is offered as evidence that the model works commercially, not just rhetorically.

Whether that figure is representative is impossible to verify independently, and readers should treat any single-firm recovery number with appropriate caution. What is verifiable is the direction of travel: enforcement complexity is rising, timelines are lengthening, and the gap between award and payment is widening. Claimants who treat recovery as the primary objective from day one — rather than as a post-award problem — are consistently better positioned than those who optimise for the win.

Practical implications for corporate claimants

• Budget for enforcement separately. Treat the award phase and the recovery phase as two distinct projects with distinct budgets and timelines.
• Ask for recovery data, not win rates. If a firm cannot describe its recovery methodology, that is itself informative.
• Test the evidence before committing. A forensic assessment at the outset is cheaper than discovering a documentary gap three years into litigation.
• Check the defendant's asset profile early. A well-drafted claim against a judgment-proof counterparty is an expensive hobby.

The trend line is clear. Cross-border claims will keep growing as supply chains fragment and contracts multiply across borders. Recovery rates will only improve when claimants start selecting counsel on the basis of enforcement capability rather than courtroom reputation. That shift is already underway among sophisticated buyers — and the firms positioned to benefit are the ones that have been measuring recovery all along.