Composition and working method: professional and commercial judges

Oberrichter and Handelsrichter

The Commercial Court today consists of eight professional judges, members of the Obergericht, and seventy commercial judges who serve part-time alongside their principal occupation.¹ The commercial judges are organised into ten specialist groups, each designated by its field.² When a case arrives, the presiding judge selects commercial judges from the group whose expertise matches the dispute. A claim about a syndicated loan will therefore be heard by commercial judges who have worked in banking, while a dispute over a pharmaceutical licence brings in judges from the chemical and pharmaceutical industry. The anniversary coverage calculated that the seventy commercial judges together represented roughly 2,500 years of professional experience, a figure that says more about the court’s self-understanding than any statute.³

In the ordinary case the court sits as a panel of five, composed of two professional judges and three commercial judges.⁴ The lay element therefore holds the arithmetical majority, although the professional judges lead the proceedings and draft the reasoning. Commercial judges are elected by the Zurich cantonal parliament for a fixed term and are bound by the same rules on independence and recusal as professional judges.⁵ The court publishes a register of the interests of its members, which allows parties to identify potential conflicts before the bench is composed.⁶

The model raises questions that deserve a frank answer. Critics have argued that a commercial judge drawn from a large bank may find it hard to judge a dispute against a competitor or against a client of a similar institution. The answer given by the Zurich system rests on three safeguards: the published interests, the strict application of recusal rules and the fact that the commercial judges never sit alone in a contentious case. International users, for whom the idea of a lay judge in commercial litigation is unfamiliar outside continental Europe, generally accept the arrangement once they have seen it work. What they value is the absence of the problem that often troubles ordinary courts in complex financial cases: the need to explain market practice to a judge who has never encountered it.

The instruction hearing and the culture of settlement

The procedure before the Commercial Court follows the federal Civil Procedure Code, but its rhythm has a Zurich character. After a first exchange of written submissions, the court regularly summons the parties to an instruction hearing at which a delegation of the court, typically the instructing professional judge together with a commercial judge, discusses the case with the parties and their counsel. At this hearing the delegation frequently gives a provisional assessment of the legal and factual position and proposes a settlement. The hearing serves to clarify the facts, to explore an agreement and to prepare the main hearing. The frankness of the provisional assessment is what distinguishes Zurich practice. Parties leave the hearing with a clear view of how the court currently sees the case, which explains why most proceedings end there.

This practice has consequences for the choice of forum. A party that expects a long, document-heavy fight may find the early pressure towards settlement uncomfortable. A party that wants a quick, commercially sensible outcome will find the Zurich instruction hearing more efficient than most alternatives, including many arbitrations. The court’s own statistics show that it disposed of 458 cases in 2024 against 440 new filings, with 278 cases pending at the end of the year, and that the majority of cases were concluded within three to six months.⁷ These are remarkable figures for a court whose cases often involve complex financial and technical questions. They also explain why the Zurich bar has for decades advised foreign clients that the Commercial Court is a credible alternative to arbitration for disputes with a Swiss counterparty.

Notes

1. Obergericht des Kantons Zürich, “Handelsgericht – Aufgaben”, https://www.gerichte-zh.ch/organisation/handelsgericht/aufgaben.html. The page lists the sectors from which the commercial judges are drawn, including banking and insurance, audit and fiduciary services, construction and architecture, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, food and beverages, machinery and electrical engineering, competition and intellectual property, import and export, wholesale and logistics, and textiles. ↩
2. LAW.CH, “Handelsgericht Zürich”, https://law.ch/lawinfo/handelsgericht-handelsgerichte/handelsgericht-zurich/ (commercial judges divided into ten chambers, each designated by name; lists of members published on gerichte-zh.ch). ↩
3. Neue Zürcher Zeitung, “Schlichten und richten für die Wirtschaft”, https://www.nzz.ch/zuerich/150-jahre-zuercher-handelsgericht-schlichten-und-richten-fuer-die-wirtschaft-ld.132987. ↩
4. Obergericht des Kantons Zürich, “Handelsgericht – Aufgaben”, https://www.gerichte-zh.ch/organisation/handelsgericht/aufgaben.html (usual composition of two Oberrichterinnen or Oberrichter and three Handelsrichterinnen or Handelsrichter, alternatively a single judge). ↩
5. LAW.CH, LAWINFO, “Zivilprozess – Gerichtsorganisation im Kanton Zürich”, 5 October 2023, https://law.ch/lawinfo/zivilprozess/gerichtsorganisation/im-kanton-zuerich/ (positions are advertised publicly and suitable candidates are elected by the Kantonsrat); see also § 36 of the Zurich Gesetz über die Gerichts- und Behördenorganisation im Zivil- und Strafprozess (GOG, LS 211.1), text as reproduced by humanrights.ch, https://www.humanrights.ch/cms/upload/pdf/2020/200806_GOG_ZH.pdf, under which the Kantonsrat fixes the number of commercial judges and a commission advertises the posts and examines the candidates. The court publishes a list of interests (Interessenbindungen) of its members on its website. ↩
6. Obergericht des Kantons Zürich, “Handelsgericht”, https://www.gerichte-zh.ch/organisation/handelsgericht.html (reference to the published document on Interessenbindungen). ↩
7. Obergericht des Kantons Zürich, Rechenschaftsbericht 2024, https://www.gerichte-zh.ch/fileadmin/user_upload/Dokumente/obergericht/Rechenschaftsberichte/Rechenschaftsbericht_2024/RB2024.pdf, section on the Handelsgericht. The figures for the NZZ anniversary year and for 2024 are not directly comparable, since the counting of summary and single-judge matters differs between sources. ↩

For general information only. This article does not constitute legal or tax advice, does not replace advice on an individual case and creates no lawyer-client relationship. It reflects the legal position as of September 2025.