Finalists: HFW; Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan; Squire Patton Boggs (highly commended).

WilmerHale won the dispute resolution team of the year award for its tough assignment representing the Kurdistan regional government in a gas field development dispute with three Middle Eastern companies.

Tough – not just because of the amount of money at stake (more than $38bn) – but because it involved frequent trips into an ISIS warzone. The dispute played out in a lengthy LCIA arbitration with ancillary court proceedings in multiple jurisdictions in Europe, the US and the Middle East.

That required a cross-border team to gather evidence from dozens of witnesses and experts on both sides of the Atlantic and in the Middle East, building up a comprehensive defence that knitted together topics such as geophysics, the construction and operation of gas processing plants, drafting and analysing field development plans, and the impact of foreign law on hydrocarbon marketing (all against the backdrop of an ongoing conflict). After four years of arbitration proceedings, WilmerHale secured a favourable outcome for its client, settling for less than 5% of the original amount sought.

The court proceedings were also a success, notably in Dubai where the team successfully argued (among other contentions) for state immunity – the first ever judgment on state immunity in the Dubai International Finance Centre courts.

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