Małgorzata Surdek-Janicka

Małgorzata Surdek-Janicka is an international arbitrator and the founder of SURDEK Arbitration. She currently serves as Vice-President of the ICC International Court of Arbitration in Paris.

Małgorzata has acted as both counsel and arbitrator in a broad range of disputes, including infrastructure, construction, post-M&A, and complex commercial matters. Her experience spans numerous sectors, including energy, mining, transportation, banking, insurance and reinsurance, technology, retail, and manufacturing. She has sat as arbitrator in cases involving parties from Western and Eastern Europe, Central Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and North America, and has decided disputes seated in numerous arbitral seats, including Warsaw, Paris, Vienna, London, Geneva, Zurich, Stockholm, Dubai, Bucharest, and Berlin. She has handled cases under a wide variety of arbitration rules, including ICC, SCC, DIAC, VIAC, UNCITRAL, LCIA, FAI, and PCC, and has applied a broad range of substantive laws, including Polish, English, French, Swiss, German, Czech, Georgian, Armenian, Romanian, Lithuanian, Kazakh, and Sudanese law. She has also represented parties in investment arbitrations, most recently in the mining industry under the Canada-Poland Bilateral Investment Treaty.

Before establishing her full-time arbitrator practice in autumn 2022, Małgorzata spent 25 years at the international law firm CMS, progressing through all levels of the organisation to its senior leadership. She began her career as an associate in the M&A team and later became a partner responsible for the Commercial and Disputes teams in Poland, before assuming responsibility for the firm’s Disputes practice across Central and Eastern Europe. She was subsequently appointed Managing Partner of CMS in Poland. During her final decade at CMS, she served on the board of CMS Cameron McKenna Nabarro Olswang LLP in London and was a member of the firm’s global International Arbitration Group.

Member of the Warsaw Bar; Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators in London; Vice-President of the ICC International Court of

Arbitration in Paris; past ICC Court member for Poland; member of the ICC Commission on Arbitration and ADR; member of the board of the

Polish Arbitration Association; member of the Arbitration Commission at ICC Poland; member of Arbitral Women.

Małgorzata has been invited to speak at numerous leading international arbitration conferences worldwide, including the 5th ICC European Arbitration Conference in Paris, Paris Arbitration Week (2021), London International Disputes Week (2022), Prague Arbitration Day (2021), Vilnius Arbitration Day (2022), Tel-Aviv Arbitration Week (2022), Legal Business International Arbitration Summit in London (2022), the 43rd ICC Institute of World Business Law Annual Conference in Paris (2023), the 19th JURIS Leading Arbitrators’ Symposium in Vienna (2024), the 8th ICC European Conference on International Arbitration in Paris (2024), the 2nd ADGM Civil Law Conference in Abu Dhabi (2024), the Caucasus and Central Asia Construction Forum in Tbilisi (2024), GAR Live: Shanghai (2024), the 20th JURIS Leading Arbitrators’ Symposium in Vienna (2025), DIS in Bucharest (2025), London International Disputes Week (2025), Vilnius Arbitration Day (2025), ICC Institute of World Business Law in Dubai (2026), the 4th VIAC CAN Congress in Vienna (2026), among others.

She is a co-author of a commentary on the Arbitration Rules of the Court of Arbitration at the Polish Chamber of Commerce in Warsaw.