Biography
Thomas Clay is a Professor of Private Law at the Sorbonne Law School (Université Paris 1) where he teaches Arbitration Law and Alternative Dispute Resolution. In 2020, he was also the University’s acting President and, in 2022, he founded Sorbonne Arbitrage. During a long tenure at the Université de Versailles, he created and directed the “Arbitration & International Trade” Master's degree in collaboration with the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), and was Dean of the Faculty of Law, Vice President of the University, and personal adviser to the Secretary of State in charge of Education and Research. He is also a lawyer at the Paris Bar.
Thomas Clay is a member of many scholarly associations, author of numerous publications, books, articles, columns on arbitration, including a thesis called “L’arbitre [The Arbitrator]”, a sort of treatise on the rights and obligations of the arbitrator and a “Code de l’arbitrage commenté [Commented Code of Arbitration]”, a form of restatement of the French law, the second edition of which was published in 2021. He has also been writing the arbitration law column in the Recueil Dalloz for the last 20 years and annually publishes the French International Arbitration Law Report with Maître Philippe Pinsolle. He has participated in numerous conferences and congresses around the world on international arbitration.
Thomas Clay is also the managing partner of Clay Arbitration, the firm that houses his arbitration and legal practice. He has participated in more than one hundred arbitration proceedings, as chairman, sole arbitrator and co-arbitrator in domestic and international arbitrations, as well as ad hoc and institutional arbitrations in the fields of energy, telecommunications, construction, distribution, commercial law, sports law, labour law, etc. (ICC, ICSID, LCIA). Thomas Clay works in French, Spanish, English and Italian, either as counsel or as an arbitrator (ICC, ICSID, LCIA, Stockholm Arbitration Chamber, Center for Mediation and Arbitration of Paris, Milan Arbitration Chamber, Court of Arbitration for Sport in Africa, the Middle East and South America, etc.). He was appointed by France as a co-arbitrator in the first ICSID arbitration against France. He is Vice-President of “Paris, home of International Arbitration”.
Thomas Clay was closely involved in the drafting of the Decree No. 2011-48 dated 13 January 2011 on arbitration law reform.