Photo: Mike Scarcella/ALM

Squire Patton Boggs has added its second international arbitration partner from New York's Curtis, Mallet-Prevost & Mosle since the start of 2019, as part of a team that also includes a counsel and six associates.

Partner Ali Gursel follows Miriam Harwood, who joined Squire in New York earlier in March to become the co-head of the firm's international arbitration practice. For both attorneys, the core of their practice is investor treaty arbitration, representing states in cases brought by international investors.

Harwood spent over 25 years at Curtis, which she described as “punching above its weight,”  but she said that it was becoming harder to carry on her work at the firm. While Curtis once was home to 320 lawyers, that number has dipped substantially. Data provided to The American Lawyer put the firm's head count at the end of 2018 at 277.

Curtis' revenue also dropped by over 12 percent in 2018, according to preliminary data from the firm, to $136 million. That may have increased the challenge of supporting lengthy arbitration battles, particularly on behalf of nation states with tight budgets that don't pay fees on the same schedule as deep-pocketed corporations.

“Squire has the platform and has the resources, so you can ride out the case,” Harwood said.

Her practice focuses on construction disputes, along with telecom and oil and gas fights.

In the past, Harwood has handled substantial work for the Venezuelan government in cases brought by U.S. oil companies, including a long-running $30 billion dispute with ConocoPhillips and a $16 billion dispute with Exxon Mobil Corp. She also represented Venezuela's national oil and gas company PDVSA in two commercial arbitrations brought by ConocoPhillips.

She is currently representing Libya in an $80 million case brought by the Austrian construction company over road-building projects disrupted by that country's revolution.

And she and Gursel are handling a number of matters on behalf of Turkmenistan, including a $750 million claim brought by Russian telecoms multinational Mobile TeleSystems.

Gursel, who was born in Turkey, was behind Curtis opening up a series of offices in Central Asia starting in the late 2000s. He led the Istanbul office when it opened in 2007, had a hand in an opening in the Kazakhstan capital of Astana in 2008, and then took the lead when the firm opened in Ashgabat, the capital of Turkmenistan, in 2011. According to Curtis's website, while it maintains offices in Astana and Almaty, the largest city in Kazakhstan, the Istanbul and Ashgabat offices are now closed.

Harwood drew a contrast between Squire and her previous firm. While the former has grown from its Cleveland roots to 47 offices in 20 countries primarily through two substantial mergers, first with the U.K.'s Hammonds in 2010 and then with Washington, D.C.-based Patton Boggs in 2014, Curtis has resisted the prospect of a combination.

“There are very few firms like Curtis, and they like to keep it that way,” she said. “I understand the allegiance to the old way of doing things, but this is the wave of the future.”

A spokeswoman from Curtis did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday.