Speaker details

Biography

Dually qualified in Paris and Latvia, Dr. Galina Zukova is a leading arbitration practitioner with twenty years of legal experience. She has served as an arbitrator in appr. 70 cases conducted under the most major institutional rules, including the ICC, LCIA, DIS, VIAC, SCC and Milan Chamber of Arbitration, and under the UNCITRAL Rules. She also regularly represents clients (individuals, corporate and state entities), and acts as expert in international arbitration proceedings. Before founding her own firm in 2019, Dr. Zukova was a Partner with a boutique law firm and a lawyer in the top International Arbitration Practice Group of a major international law firm based in Paris. Prior to this, she worked as Counsel at the ICC International Court of Arbitration. In that role, she oversaw hundreds of arbitration proceedings and scrutinized hundreds of arbitral awards. Her previous work experience also includes the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, a leading Baltic law firm and the Latvian European Integration Bureau (Latvian Government), where she was in charge of the legal aspects of Latvia’s accession to the European Union. Dr. Zukova is a Member of the ICC International Court of Arbitration, a Member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration, a Vice-Chair of the Arbitration Council of the Georgian International Arbitration Centre (GIAC) and a Steering Committee Member of the Armenian International Arbitration Centre. She is a Council Member of the ICC Institute of World Business Law, and a Member of the ICC Commission on Arbitration and ADR. In 2022, Dr Zukova was included in the European Commission’s List of Candidates Suitable for Appointment as Arbitrators in EU trade and investment agreements with third states. She is also an Associate Professor at the University of Versailles Saint-Quentin (Paris-Saclay) and the Riga Graduate School of Law. A Latvian lawyer by training (LLB, University of Latvia), Galina has a PhD from the European University Institute (Florence, Italy) and an LLM from the University of Exeter (UK). She was also a Visiting Scholar at the Yale University (US). Dr. Zukova is fluent in English, French, Italian, Latvian, Russian and Spanish. She has a working knowledge of German. Galina is ranked in: Legal 500 (Powerlist Arbitration France), Who’s Legal as Thought Leader, Global Leader and National Leader for France; The Best Lawyers in France and Euromoney’s ExpertGuides Commercial Arbitration. In 2018, ArbitralWomen included Galina in its publication “Women Pioneers in Dispute Resolution”.