Patrick W Pearsall

Allen & Overy LLP

Washington, D.C. www.allenovery.com

patrick.pearsall@allenovery.com Tel: +1 202 683 3863

Biography

Patrick has extensive experience representing parties in international disputes. He served in the US State Department for nearly a decade and departed as the chief of investment arbitration. He helped lead the negotiation of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and the US-China Bilateral Investment Treaty. He is widely recognised as one of the foremost experts on investment protection in the world. Patrick has successfully resolved claims involving billions of dollars and is often called upon to provide strategic counsel to parties on complex commercial and investment matters. He is a professor at Georgetown University.

My first mentor, the late professor Hans Smit, insisted that I drop all my plans and go to Paris after law school. For those who were lucky enough to know professor Smit, it will come as no surprise that you could not resist him when he had his mind set. Thus, I started my career at the ICC in Paris. That experience was invaluable. The work was complex and interesting. The community of colleagues was inspiring and generous. I never looked back. From Paris I went to New York for several years and then to Washington DC to join the US State Department. As an attorney for the department I worked on several international disputes, negotiated treaties (on topics from fish to FET), sat as the head of delegation in dozens of international negotiations, and ran a major environmental study and energy infrastructure permitting process that had significant international arbitration-related issues. If you have the opportunity to work in government, do it! Ultimately, I was privileged to serve as the chief of investment arbitration for the United States. Since leaving government my practice has focused on complex international disputes – a mix of commercial arbitration, treaty-based arbitration and pure public international law.

What do you enjoy most about working in arbitration?

Our community. Simply put, our group of colleagues is unique in the world. I don’t know another practice area that can match our sense of community. I appreciate the friends, the collaborators and even occasionally the adversaries in my cases – it is the people that I have been lucky to meet along the way that are the sustaining joy of my practice.

How has the practice of arbitration evolved since you first began your career?

When I first began my career investment arbitration was very much in its infancy. Doing research on a tricky question of arbitral practice meant finding and reading a book. Document review consisted of a room, several dozen boxes, a half-eaten sandwich, chapped fingers, a nervous senior associate looming over you in the hallway and a ride home in a poorly ventilated taxi sometime after midnight. Change is good.

What impact will technological innovation have on the practice of arbitration in the next five to 10 years?

Technology will continue to make us more connected. For the practice of arbitration, we will inevitably be more accessible to one another and our clients. My hope is that innovations in technology will help us work more efficiently and that consequently arbitration will better fulfil its promise of being a user-friendly forum for the pacific resolution of disputes.

Has covid-19 had an impact on commercial arbitration? Are parties willing to be flexible in procedure and approach to get it over the line?

The coronavirus pandemic has impacted our lives in still untold ways. We have a lot of healing to do. That said, I have found some aspects of what we did to combat isolation to be helpful in practice. For example, the new normal of videoconferencing instead of phone calls or travel has allowed for more frequent and robust communication with clients and opposing counsel. In certain instances, happily, a productive Zoom call has even led to amicable settlement.

You have enjoyed a very distinguished career so far. What would you like to achieve that you have not yet accomplished?

My goals in the short term are modest. Over the next few years, I want to do my part to be of use to the community as we rebuild our practices in the post-pandemic era. I want to be helpful to the various reform efforts underway in commercial and investment treaty arbitration and I want to make sure we don’t squander a real opportunity for innovation. Looking forward, I want to be a leader on diversity and inclusion and I want to leave the field better than I found it. Ultimately, if I end my career as a mentor who made a difference in someone’s life and if so doing I contributed to the development of the field in a meaningful way, that would be the highest achievement I could hope for.

Peers and clients say: “We are very impressed by his thorough, diligent and professional manner” “Mr Pearsall is a brilliant and creative lawyer” “Patrick is a stupendously clever and engaging arbitration practitioner”