Gillian Carmichael Lemaire is a dual-qualified lawyer, arbitrator and mediator based in London. She focuses on risk and disputes arising from international construction and infrastructure projects and commercial contracts.

A UK national and bilingual English/French, Gillian is a graduate of the University of Strathclyde and became a Scottish solicitor in 1984. She started her career in personal injury and professional negligence litigation in Scotland and then moved into the field of international arbitration in Paris, where she qualified as an Avocat in 1994.

Until moving to London recently, she had spent most of her career in international law firms in Paris, as well as gaining in-house experience in the legal department of a French-based international utilities company.

Gillian is now an independent practitioner in her principal areas of experience, which are international contracts, arbitration and mediation in the construction and engineering, infrastructure and utilities, energy, hotels and leisure, and general corporate and commercial sectors.

Her arbitration experience extends to both ad hoc arbitrations and cases administered by a range of international arbitration institutions. Gillian’s Franco-Scottish profile affords her a breadth of both common and civil law experience. She also has strong experience of working on disputes involving Middle Eastern legal systems, particularly Egypt.

An advocate of simplifying dispute resolution processes including, where appropriate, by using technology, Gillian called for less paper in arbitrations in her Kluwer Arbitration Blog post Paperless Arbitrations - Where Do We Stand?

Gillian is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators and is accredited for mediation by the Institut d’Expertise d’Arbitrage et de Médiation (IEAM) and the Paris Bar. She is an Advisory Member of the Board of Directors of ArbitralWomen and acted as an executive member of the Paris organising committee for the recent Global Pound Conference Series 2016-17: Shaping the Future of Dispute Resolution & Improving Access to Justice.