Peter Goldsmith KC

Practice Areas

Lord (Peter) Goldsmith KC, PC, London Co-Managing Partner and Chair of European and Asian Litigation, joined Debevoise in 2007. Lord Goldsmith served as the UK’s Attorney General from 2001 to 2007, prior to which he was in private practice as one of the leading barristers in London.

Lord Goldsmith acts for a variety of clients alongside his role as Chair of the firm’s European and Asian litigation practices, in arbitration and litigation in the United Kingdom and other countries. He is a KC and appears regularly in court in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, including Cayman where he has also been admitted to practise, as well as in arbitration. Significant work includes partnership disputes, joint ventures, oil and gas disputes, auditors’ liability, insurance and takeover law, banking law, company law, insolvency litigation, public law and public international law, including judicial review and human rights law. He also has a strong history and life-long support for pro bono assistance to bring legal advice to the disadvantaged.

Lord Goldsmith conducts arbitrations under all the major institutions including the LCIA, ICC and SIAC and ad hoc arbitrations. He is closely connected with the LCIA, the ICC (for whom he co-chaired the task force on Arbitration for States and State entities), the HKIAC and the SIAC. He also has been appointed or confirmed as arbitrator by the LCIA, the SIAC and the ICC, and is included in the international arbitration database of the Arbitration Center at the Institute of Modern Arbitration, Moscow.

His past and present appointments include a Fellow for the American Bar Foundation; a Council Member of the Australian Centre for International Commercial Arbitration (ACICA); Chairman of the Bar of England & Wales, Chairman of the Financial Reporting Review Panel (1997–2000); co-Chairman of the IBA’s Human Rights Institute (1998–2001); elected to membership of the American Law Institute (1997); and made a member of the Paris Bar (1997). He was a Council Member of the International Bar Association (IBA) and the Union Internationale des Avocats; a member of the Singapore International Commercial Court Committee; Council Member of the International Section of the American Bar Association; Board Member of the American Bar Association Rule of Law Initiative; Co-Chairman of the ICC Task Force on States and State Entities; member of the International Advisory Board of the Association of Caribbean Corporate Counsel; member of the Independent Governance Committee of FIFA, football’s governing body; Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Access to Justice Foundation; a nominated member of the P.R.I.M.E. Finance Panel of Experts; and Chairman of the International Agreements Committee (a Select Committee of the House of Lords).

Lord Goldsmith practised from Fountain Court Chambers from 1972–2001, specialising principally in commercial, corporate and international litigation and appellate work. He became Queen’s Counsel in 1987 at the early age of 37, Chairman of the English Bar at 45, and has judicial experience as a Crown Court Recorder and a Deputy High Court Judge. He has appeared at all levels of courts in the United Kingdom and in many cases in the House of Lords, the Privy Council and the Court of Appeal as well as international and European courts and in the courts of a number of other jurisdictions including the highest court in the Caribbean and Cayman. Lord Goldsmith was appointed Attorney General in 2001, acting as chief legal adviser to the government on matters of domestic, European and international law. He represented the government in numerous cases in UK and international courts. He also argued as counsel in the House of Lords two of the 15 cases regarded as the most important British cases of the last 150 years.