Caroline Richard

Caroline is a partner in Freshfields’ international arbitration group based in Washington, DC. She has acted in many international commercial and investor-State arbitrations, specialising in energy and natural resources disputes, among others, in Latin America.

Caroline was named a “Rising Star” by Law360 in 2016, recognizing her as one of just ten outstanding arbitration practitioners in the nation under the age of 40. More recently, in 2017, Caroline was named one of “DC’s Rising Stars” by the National Law Journal, and she was one of only two attorneys to be named a “Next Generation Lawyer” in The Legal 500’s recent Latin America-wide international arbitration guide.

Caroline is also an adjunct professor at American University’s Washington College of Law, where she co-teaches an investment treaty arbitration course. She is a member of the Academic Council and Advisory Board of the Institute for Transnational Arbitration (ITA). She is also the author of the Guide to the ICSID Additional Facility (Arbitration) Rules (Oxford University Press, forthcoming).

Prior to joining Freshfields, Caroline was a law clerk at the Supreme Court of Canada for Justice Marie Deschamps.

Caroline’s recent experience includes advising:

Crystallex International Corporation in obtaining a record-setting US$1.4 billion award (the largest ever ICSID Additional Facility award) in compensation for Venezuela’s expropriation of one of the world’s largest untapped gold mines;

Tenaris and its subsidiary in obtaining a total of US$386 million from two awards against Venezuela for the expropriation of its investments in three companies in Venezuela’s steel sector;

Total and Repsol in a Geneva-seated ICC arbitration in a contractual dispute for US$400 million against Sonatrach, the Algerian state oil company, based on the failure by the contractual partner to ensure the stability of a production sharing agreement after the enforcement by the government of a tax legislation targeting foreign investors;

Glencore International AG in the first ICSID arbitration against Colombia in relation to adverse measures affecting its investment in one of the largest coal mines in Colombia; and

The Karachaganak consortium, composed of UK, Russian, Italian and US international oil companies, in multibillion-dollar UNCITRAL arbitrations initiated pursuant to a PSC and several investment treaties, which arose from Kazakhstan’s imposition of various tax, regulatory and environmental measures impacting the consortium’s investments.