Position
Stephen Fietta QC is the firm’s founder and principal. He is ranked by Chambers Global Directory as one of the world’s top public international law practitioners.
He has practised at the forefront of public international law, whether within government or private practice, for more than 20 years. He has advised on cases before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), European Court of Justice, European Court of Human Rights and multiple domestic courts. He has one of the world’s most prolific and longstanding practices in investment arbitration, having appeared in more than 30 pending and decided cases under the World Bank (ICSID), UNCITRAL and other rules. He has won some of the largest or most notable investment arbitration awards over recent years.
Before establishing Fietta in 2015, Stephen co-founded the world’s first specialist public international law firm (Volterra Fietta) in 2011. Prior to that, he was a partner specialising in public international law at a leading US and global law firm. Both of those practices were top-ranked at the time. Stephen regularly manages large teams of lawyers (including co-counsel), experts and witnesses in multiple jurisdictions.
Stephen is a Visiting Senior Lecturer at King’s College, London. In January 2015, Stephen was awarded the Smit-Lowenfeld Prize by the International Arbitration Club of New York for the best article published globally in the field of international arbitration, entitled Public International Law, Investment Treaties and Commercial Arbitration: an emerging system of complementarity? Stephen has co-authored (with Dr Robin Cleverly) A Practitioners Guide to Maritime Delimitation, published in March 2016, which has subsequently been cited before both the ICJ and ITLOS.
Career
Languages
English (native), French and Italian
Member
Education
Queen’s Counsel (appointed January 2019)
Solicitor-Advocate (Higher Courts Civil Proceedings) (2016)
Admitted to practise in England & Wales (1997)
B.A. (1993) and M.A. (1994) in Law, University of Cambridge, Winner, Cambridge University Prize for Commercial Law
Legal Practice Course (Distinction), University of Law, Guildford
Stephen is a Visiting Senior Lecturer at Kings College London, where he teaches the MA course “Geopolitics, Territory and Security”
Stephen has also lectured on various public international law topics on LLM and MSc courses at University College London (UCL), the London School of Economics (LSE) and University of Southampton
Leisure
Cycling, tennis, skiing, history, philosophy and writing
London: Dispute resolution
International arbitration
Within: International arbitration
Fietta LLP 'has a large case load and has talent from top to bottom'. The firm is widely respected for its experience in investor-state arbitration. Stephen Fietta QC, who took silk in 2019, has secured numerous substantial awards for his state and investor clients; Jiries Saadeh and Ashique Rahman were promoted to partner and counsel, respectively. Oonagh Sands and Laura Rees-Evans are the senior associates to note.
Public international law
Within: Leading individuals
Stephen Fietta QC - Fietta LLP
Within: Public international law
Arguably, 'one of the leading boutique practices in public international law', Fietta LLP has substantial expertise in investment treaty proceedings, maritime boundary disputes and human rights matters. The practice is regularly instructed by sovereign states, corporate, individual and NGO clients across a wide spectrum of public international law matters. Stephen Fietta QC has 'an outstanding reputation' in investment treaty arbitration and often leads on high-profile and substantial claims, including acting for a large group of Greek investors in an ICSID arbitration against the Republic of Cyprus arising from the Cypriot financial crisis and European Union/IMF bail-out of 2013. Also of note are recently promoted partner Jiries Saadeh, counsel Ashique Rahman and associates Oonagh Sands and Laura Rees-Evans.