Clients entrust us with their largest and most important disputes, and we have secured for them some of the largest awards in arbitration history. Set out below is an introduction to our experience of international arbitrations arising in the commercial, investment treaty, and public international law fora. Our team has also a wide range of experience in arbitration- related domestic litigation.
COMMERCIAL ARBITRATION
Our experience in commercial arbitrations extends to representing corporate entities, private individuals, and States/State-owned entities. Clients approach us for our advice before a dispute has crystallised in order to assess their options prior to lodging a claim or where they anticipate a claim being brought against them. We have a deep-rooted understanding of the major commercial arbitral rules and have many decades of combined experience representing clients in the commonly used commercial arbitration seats.
INVESTMENT TREATY ARBITRATION
The firm’s investment treaty practice is a widely accepted market leader, with our lawyers having successfully represented clients in a number of historic cases. Unlike many other firms, we have significant experience acting both for and against States in investment treaty arbitration, and are therefore able to better anticipate and navigate the strategies and arguments that parties will typically pursue in such disputes.
We regularly advise our clients on investment protections relevant to them. This can be valuable to investors seeking to maximise protections available to their foreign investments, and to States seeking to reduce possible legal exposure arising from governmental measures.
PUBLIC INTERNATIONAL LAW
Our team has significant experience in inter-State disputes, including maritime delimitation and territorial disputes, the Law of the Sea, shared waterways, human rights, international trade, and international civil aviation.
We are familiar with working with government departments and external specialists from various disciplines to form straightforward and persuasive pleadings. Members of our team have appeared before the International Court of Justice, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, United Nations bodies, domestic constitutional courts, World Trade Organization panels, and arbitral tribunals. Our public international law work also includes acting for clients on a pro bono basis.
ARBITRATION-RELATED LITIGATION
We have a wide range of experience acting before national courts, having represented clients before courts at all stages of the arbitral process, including in award enforcement.
Our team has appeared before the UK Supreme Court, including representing the ICC in the widely reported case of Halliburton v Chubb. We have also acted for clients in cases arising out of the 1996 Arbitration Act, including in proceedings where a party has sought to challenge an award on the basis of jurisdiction, irregularity or a point of law.
We have wide-ranging experience acting in pre- and post-arbitration litigation (enforcement and annulment proceedings) at all levels of the French court system. We regularly represent our clients before the French courts and our experience includes enforcing or resisting enforcement of awards against assets owned by sovereign States.
Our litigation experience extends to the U.S. Federal and State courts, for which we have undertaken numerous cases in relation to set aside proceedings, section 1782 applications, and amicus curiae briefs.
We also have experience developing strategies for and coordinating litigation proceedings across various jurisdictions in Asia, including in Singapore, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, South Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam.