SLOVENIA Trends and Developments Contributed by: Vesna Cukrov and Veronika Cukrov, Law Firm Cukrov (Odvetniška družba Cukrov o.p., d.o.o.)
What businesses should do now Most of the useful protection is contractual and proce - dural – and inexpensive by comparison with the cost of a challenged award. At the drafting stage, businesses should: • consider addressing AI expressly in the arbitration clause, for instance by requiring that the arbitrator shall not delegate the analysis or the drafting of the award to an AI system; • decide consciously whether they want a dynamic or static reference to institutional rules; and • specify the seat with care, as it determines which court hears a setting-aside application and under which law. At the outset of a dispute, businesses should: • raise AI at the first case management conference and propose that it be addressed in Procedural Order No 1; • propose a short protocol covering the confiden - tiality of tools, verification of authorities and any disclosure obligation; and • confirm their own house rules in writing with exter - nal counsel and experts. During the proceedings, businesses should: • verify the authorities cited against them – this is now a routine and rapid task, and ARIHQ demon - strates what it can uncover; • do the same with their own submissions before filing – in the reported sanctions cases to date, counsel have featured considerably more often than arbitrators; and • document authenticity concerns as they arise rather than reserving them. Finally, after the award, businesses should: • read the reasoning against the record – if authori - ties appear that no party cited, that warrants exam - ination; and • act promptly – statutory time limits for setting aside are short and unforgiving, and even a compelling ground is worth nothing if raised out of time.
• agreeing a document authentication protocol where the case turns on disputed electronic evi - dence; and • budgeting for forensic examination in cases where the sums at stake justify it. Artificial intelligence as decision-maker: no longer hypothetical In November 2025, the American Arbitration Asso - ciation and its international division, the International Centre for Dispute Resolution (ICDR), introduced an “AI Arbitrator” function for construction disputes determined on a documents-only basis. Developed with QuantumBlack and trained on more than 1,500 of the institution’s own construction awards, it retains human validation in the process, and the institution has signalled an intention to extend the model to other sectors and high-value disputes. This is a natural extension of a trend driven by com - mercial demand. Low- and mid-value disputes are frequently uneconomic to arbitrate because legal costs consume the claim. A fast, inexpensive doc - uments-only determination has obvious merit for a EUR150,000 subcontractor claim that would other - wise be written off. However, it collides with a structural feature of arbitra - tion law. Arbitration derives its force from party con - sent, and ZArbit (like the Model Law) is constructed around arbitrators as individuals. Articles 14 to 18 govern their appointment, their challenge for justifi - able doubts as to independence and impartiality or for want of agreed qualifications, and the termination of their mandate. Applied to a model, these provisions raise conceptual and practical difficulties. A party that has consented to a defined AI-assisted procedure may be bound by it; a party that has not has firm ground on which to object. Businesses should accordingly check what their arbi - tration clauses actually incorporate. Institutional rules are frequently incorporated dynamically, meaning that the version in force when the dispute arises applies rather than the version the parties had in mind on sig - nature. A clause drafted in 2019 may import proce - dures nobody contemplated.
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