When Jan Paulsson was starting his storied arbitration career in the late 1970s, he noticed two elegant Swiss arbitrators wearing cufflinks with three crowns. About 20 years ago, he found the same cufflinks in Stockholm, and began a tradition of giving them as gifts to colleagues or rivals who impressed him with their relentless focus and unfailing courtesy, or for “going the extra mile with elegance.”
On April 7 Paulsson is launching what he bills as the world’s first global arbitration boutique under the name Three Crowns, with five partners who earned their cufflinks by impressing him when their paths crossed. In addition to being brilliant lawyers who exhibit grace under pressure, “they’re all very stylish people,” said Paulsson, who posed for the May 2001 American Lawyer with an overcoat blowing in the wind like a cape as he overlooked a canal in The Hague, hours before his landmark victory in Bahrain v. Qatar at the International Court of Justice.
