James Castello, a partner in King & Spalding's Paris office and a member of its international arbitration group, has been a practicing lawyer for more than 25 years. He has advised and represented clients in a wide range of legal disputes, particularly in international arbitrations (commercial and investor-state; institutional as well as ad hoc). James has served since 2001 on the U.S. delegation to the Arbitration Working Group at UNCITRAL; the views expressed in this keynote address, however, are not necessarily those of the U.S. government. At the time of the 2006 ITA-CANACO Conference, James was counsel in the arbitration group of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, based in that firm'sVienna office. In 2007, James was named to a five-year term on the Court of the London Court of International Arbitration, and he now serves as President of the LCIA's European Users' Council. Since 2009, he has also served on the International Advisory Board of the Vienna International Arbitral Centre as well as on the editorial board of Global Arbitration Review. He writes and speaks frequently on arbitration topics and is the author, inter alia, of the chapter on the UNCITRAL Arbitration Rules in The Practitioner's Handbook on International Commercial Arbitration (Oxford 2009). At the beginning of his legal career, James served as law clerk to Justices William J. Brennan Jr. and Thurgood Marshall on the U.S. Supreme Court and to Judge Howard M. Holtzmann on the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal at The Hague. He holds a J.D. and M.A. (Econ.) from the University of California, Berkeley as well as a B.A. from Yale University, and he is admitted to practice in New York, Washington, D.C., and Paris. James can be reached at JCastello@kslaw.com.