HomeDavid A R Williams QC

Expert resume of David A R Williams QC

Barrister/Arbitrator at Bankside Chambers, Auckland and Singapore and Essex Court Chambers, London

David A R Williams QC is a graduate of the University of Auckland (LLB, 1965) and of Harvard University (LLM, 1966) and a member of the New Zealand, Australian and English Bars. From 1992 to 1994, he was a judge of the High Court of New Zealand. He was a visiting Fellow at the University of Virginia, US in 1979 and at Cambridge University in 2002. Mr Williams is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators and the former president of the Arbitrators' and Mediators' Institute of New Zealand Inc. He is a member of numerous international arbitration panels. Previously, he was a member of the board of the American Arbitration Association, the ICC International Court of Arbitration and the London Court of International Arbitration, and he currently serves as a member of the International Council for Commercial Arbitration (ICCA). In 2010 he was appointed an honorary professor at the University of Auckland Law School where he teaches international arbitration. Together with Amokura Kawharu, Mr Williams is co-author of Williams and Kawharu on Arbitration (LexisNexis, 2011), New Zealand’s first comprehensive treatise on domestic and international arbitration and has contributed to chapters to other works, including Muchlinski, Ortino and Schreuer (eds) The Oxford Handbook of International Investment Law (OUP, 2008) and Brown and Miles (eds) Evolution in Investment Treaty Law and Arbitration(Cambridge UP, 2011). He is also one of two arbitration editors of the New Zealand Law Review.

Mr Williams has developed a global international arbitration practice through which he has been involved, either as counsel or arbitrator, in over 125 international arbitrations. He has extensive experience as an international arbitrator in ad hoc, ICC, LCIA, AAA, and SIAC arbitrations in disputes involving oil and gas concessions, commodities pricing, joint ventures, licensing disputes, reinsurance, political risk insurance, financial transactions, power and infrastructure projects, construction, commercial contracts, and pharmaceutical industry disputes. Mr Williams has also conducted numerous investment treaty arbitrations under both the ICSID Arbitration Rules and the UNCITRAL Arbitration Rules. In addition, Mr Williams has sat on many sports arbitration panels, including under the auspices of the CAS. He serves part-time as a Justice of the Court of Appeal of the Cook Islands and as a Justice of the DIFC Court in Dubai, UAE.