Jalal (Jil) El Ahdab is a partner at Bird & Bird, in the Dispute Resolution Group in Paris. He is the Head of the Arbitration Practice in France and a member of the Dispute Resolution practice in the UAE and Morocco (and soon KSA), where he offers his clients his longstanding and cross-border expertise in managing international disputes and arbitrations, especially in international business law, notably in Europe, Africa and the MENA region, focusing on international disputes and foreign investments.
Jalal acts as a counsel, an arbitrator and an expert in various sectors such as construction, telecoms, ports, airports, energy, life sciences, sports, corporate and more.
He has a 25-year experience in the field and was involved in around 200 matters (over 40 as an arbitrator). From an institutional standpoint, Dr. Ahdab is a former member (Lebanon’s representative) of UNCITRAL (2013/18), of the International Court of Arbitration of the ICC (2015/21), and a former chair of the IBA Arab Regional Forum and of the IBA Mediation Committee (2019/22).
He currently sits as a CAS arbitrator (since 2011), and is the Chair of the CIMAC Court in Morocco, as well as the Chair of the Advisory Board of the MCCI/MARC in Mauritius, and a member of the Advisory Board of VIAC in Austria. At last, he is the outgoing Vice-Chair of the European Branch of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (Chair since 2018).
Dr. Ahdab is qualified to practice in Beirut, Paris and New York, and is equally fluent in Arabic, English and French. He has released a book on French Arbitration Law, written (in French) jointly with Sorbonne Professor Daniel Mainguy and published with LexisNexis (2021).
Updated at: 14/07/2024