Seppälä goes solo
Christopher Seppälä, the chief legal adviser to FIDIC, has left White & Case to practise as an independent arbitrator, mediator and consultant.
Seppälä retired from White & Case at the end of last year, after 35 years at the firm’s Paris office – where he founded the international arbitration practice.
A former vice-president emeritus of the ICC International Court of Arbitration, he also served as an international member of the board of directors of the Arbitration Institute at the Finnish Chamber of Commerce and is on the CAMARB list of international arbitrators. He is admitted to the Paris and New York bars.
Seppälä practises international commercial arbitration with a particular focus on international construction and engineering claims. He has been a legal advisor to FIDIC since 2000, after being a member of a task group which prepared the 1999 Red, Yellow and Silver books. He currently serves as FIDIC’s observer at the ICC International Court of Arbitration and as dean of the FIDIC Academy. He has also written a commentary on the FIDIC Red Book.
As counsel, he led a team advising Finnish power utility in a dispute with France’s Areva and Germany’s Siemens over a delayed multi-billion nuclear power project. He has advised Grupo Unidos por el Canal, a consortium involved in several ICC disputes with the Panama Canal Authority.
Seppälä tells GAR he does not actually think that "practising independently is so different from working within a firm," saying lawyers in firms are also "sooner or later subject to the same market forces as an individual practitioner".
Ank Santens of White & Case tells GAR Seppälä is the “éminence grise of international construction arbitration” and says it has been a “real privilege and pleasure for me to work with him and learn from the best”.
She adds: “I vividly remember how as a senior partner at the height of his career he took the time to sit down with me (at the time a fourth-year associate) in his office and take me through the FIDIC suite of contracts of which he was the main drafter, one clause at a time.”
“Chris has been a mentor to me and a partner in all the senses of that word, generous with his time and advice and always supportive and willing to help. We will miss him at White & Case and I know he will miss us, as he has always been very loyal to the firm and grateful for the opportunities it offered him.”
Alexis Mourre of Mourre Chessa Le Lay Arbitration tells GAR that Seppälä is “without any doubt the most experienced and knowledgeable specialist in construction matters, and the ICC Court has drawn great profit from his advice as its FIDIC observer”.
“With his enormous energy and enthusiasm, I have no doubt that he will be fully successful in his new career as a full-time arbitrator.”
ICC Court president Claudia Salomon says he is “rightfully recognized as a leading light in construction arbitration”. Gary Born of WilmerHale describes Seppälä as “an iconic master of his field”.
Seppälä’s father is Finnish and he lived in Finland as a child. He graduated from Harvard University before securing a JD at Columbia Law School.