Laura Rees-Evans

Practice Areas

Laura’s practice focuses on contentious and non-contentious aspects of public international law (PIL) and international arbitration. Laura advises on a wide range of PIL issues, including international investment law; State immunity and the immunity of international organisations; international human rights law; international humanitarian law; the law of the sea; statehood and sovereignty issues; treaty interpretation; and UN procedure.

She represents State clients in inter-State proceedings before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and under the auspices of the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA). She has also advised clients in proceedings before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). She acts for claimant investors and respondent States in complex and high-value international investment arbitrations across a range of industry sectors, and has experience of all the major arbitral rules (ICSID, SCC, UNCITRAL).

Laura also regularly advises on PIL issues before domestic courts (including, in particular, State immunity issues, recognition and enforcement of arbitral awards, and set-aside proceedings), and recently advised a client defending set-aside proceedings in which a reference was made to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU).

Laura has delivered numerous training courses to officials of State clients and lectures at academic and other institutions on topics of PIL and international arbitration. Recent highlights include providing training to Government officials of two Asian States on various topics within the law of the sea; delivering lectures to post-graduate students on the Diplomatic Studies Programme and as part of the Public International Law Discussion Group series at the University of Oxford; and teaching at King’s College London. Laura is frequently invited to speak at conferences and has authored and co-authored numerous articles on topics of PIL and international arbitration. Laura has recently been appointed as a Member of the Public International Law Advisory Panel of the British Institute of International and Comparative Law (BIICL)), and an inaugural Honorary International Law Practice Fellow of BIICL. She is a member of the ILA (British Branch) and a Member of the ILA Committee on Protection of People at Sea. She is a member of LexisNexis’s Q&A panel of experts for its Arbitration and Brexit practice areas. She is also a member of ArbitralWomen.