Shaistah Akhtar, Partner in the Dispute Resolution group, was interviewed for The Times' 'Lawyer of the Week' piece.
She was featured after leading the Mishcon de Reya team acting for the Nigerian Government in its successful overturning of a $6.6 billion (£5.3 billion) arbitration award obtained against it in 2017.
Shaistah discussed her career – including the best advice she has received, what she most enjoys about her job and who she admires most in the law – as well as the case itself.
Discussing the biggest obstacle she had to overcome in the case, she said: "Challenging an arbitral award several years out of time [was the biggest hurdle]. The deadline for appeal is 28 days and extensions to this are rarely granted — at most weeks or months in previous cases. Obtaining an extension of time of this length had never been done before, but once we achieved this, it opened the gate to Nigeria presenting a serious and compelling fraud case."
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