Paolo Michele Patocchi, Switzerland

Partner at Patocchi & Marzolini, Arbitrator

Michele graduated from law school in Geneva in 1977. He specialised in the law of international trade and arbitration in London (1986-1988) and joined an international law firm in London as an associate (1989-1991). In 1992, Michele joined a national law firm in Zurich, and he has worked as counsel and arbitrator ever since. In 1994 he moved back to Geneva and joined another national law firm where he was made a partner in 1997. He has been in charge of the International Arbitration Group of the Geneva office of that firm from 1997 until 2013. In 2014 he established Patocchi & Marzolini with Paolo Marzolini.

As counsel or as an arbitrator, Michele has taken part in over 240 international arbitrations to date. He has also advised on the Swiss law of contract, the Swiss law of international arbitration and the Swiss private international law, as an expert or amicus curiae. As a practising lawyer or as an arbitrator, Michele has been called upon to work on matters involving several legal systems other than Swiss law, including in particular the laws of Albania, Algeria, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, China, Egypt, England and Wales, Ethiopia, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Italy, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Latvia, the Netherlands, Palestine, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Qatar, Russia, Spain, Turkey, the UAE, the U.S.A. and Venezuela.

Michele has been a lecturer at the Faculty of Law of Geneva (1989-2006) and he has been teaching international commercial arbitration at the Faculty of Law of İ. D. Bilkent University (Ankara) since 2013. He taught the first five-day module (Introduction to International Arbitration) at the Swiss Arbitration Academy in October 2008 and October 2009.

Michele has also been active in international law. He has been on the ICSID list of arbitrators since 2012 (List of arbitrators designated by the Swiss Government) and has been involved in two ICSID cases, two ICSID Additional Facility Rules cases, one ICSID annulment case and one case under the OIC Treaty.

He has been a member of the team in charge of representing the Swiss Confederation before the International Court of Justice in the legal proceedings brought by the Kingdom of Belgium concerning an alleged breach of the Lugano Convention by Switzerland. These proceedings were withdrawn by the Kingdom of Belgium after Switzerland filed its first memorial setting out its preliminary objections.

Michele has collaborated with the arbitral institutions of the Swiss Chambers of Commerce in the past two decades. After the arbitration rules of the Swiss Chambers were unified in 2004, he was the first President of the National Arbitration Committee and the Special Committee in charge of hearing challenges (2004-2006) and a member of the Arbitration Court of the Swiss Chambers’ Arbitration Institution from 2013 to 2016. From 2005 to 2011 he has been a non-resident member of the Arbitration Committee of the Milan Chamber of Commerce. From 2001 to 2019 he has been a member of the Board of the Swiss Arbitration Association.