Profile

Michael Nolan is an independent arbitrator based in New York and Washington, DC. He specializes in international disputes arising from commercial contracts, concession agreements and other government contracts, and investment protection treaties. Before becoming a full-time arbitrator and member of Arbitration Chambers, Mr. Nolan practiced with Milbank LLP, where he was a partner for more than 20 years.

Mr. Nolan's arbitrations have involved many countries and legal systems on five continents. In addition to being an arbitration specialist, Mr. Nolan is a widely experienced litigator who regularly served while at Milbank as lead counsel for significant matters in U.S. state and federal trial and appellate courts and also handled adversarial aspects of bankruptcies and financial restructurings. Given the trans-national focus of his practice, Mr. Nolan has had overall responsibility for, and worked with locally qualified co-counsel on, national court and administrative proceedings in countries other than the United States, including Bermuda, Canada, the People's Republic of China, the French Republic, the Federal Republic of Germany, the United Mexican States, Mongolia, the Netherlands, the Republic of Peru, the Philippines, the Russian Federation, the Republic of Singapore, the Swiss Confederation, the Republic of Turkey, Ukraine, and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

Mr. Nolan has been an Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center since 2001. Michael co-taught with Mark Kantor during the early 2000s a course on investor-State arbitration, and Michael continues to teach a course on international commercial arbitration each year. He is the co-author with Frederic G. Sourgens, the Senator Robert J. Dole Distinguished Professor of Law and Washburn University, of Experiencing Arbitration and Experiencing International Arbitration: Resolving Cross-Border Disputes, which are law school textbooks addressed to U.S. domestic arbitration and international arbitration and were published by West Academic in 2019 and 2020.

Mr. Nolan is a member of the panels of arbitrators of the AAA/ICDR (commercial, international and large case lists), the BVIIAC and the ICSID.

From 2011-2019, while a Milbank partner, Michael was also the outside General Counsel of the Intellectual Property Owners Association, a Washington, DC-based, worldwide trade association of about 200 companies from many industries and fields of technology.