Leading international arbitration lawyer joins NUS as Director of the Centre for International Law
Ms Lucy Reed, Head of the global international arbitration and public international law groups at Freshfields, will also be appointed the first Professor of Practice at the NUS Faculty of Law.
The National University of Singapore (NUS) is pleased to announce thatMs Lucy Reed, an internationally renowned practitioner-scholar of international law, will join NUS in July 2016 as Director of the Centre for International Law (CIL). She will also be appointed as the first Professor of Practice at NUS Law.
Ms Reed holds degrees from Brown University and Chicago Law School and has been a partner at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, one of the top law firms in the world, since 1998. Since 2009, she has been helming Freshfields’ global international arbitration group and public international law group. This builds on extensive experience working with the United States Government (as legal adviser in the State Department from 1985 to 1993) and in Asia (as general counsel of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organisation). In 2014, she was conferred the Asia Women in Business Award for Best in Dispute Resolution.
In addition to her rich professional background, Ms Reed has long had a deep engagement with the academic world. She has taught at American University and the University of Miami School of Law, and in 2001 was invited to deliver the prestigious Hague Lectures at the Academy of International Law. A measure of the esteem in which she is held by practitioners and scholars alike was her election as President of the American Society of International Law from 2008 to 2010.
Ms Reed will succeed Associate Professor Robert Beckman, who has served with distinction as Director of CIL since its founding in 2009, and who will continue to head its programme on Ocean Law and Policy. Prof Beckman has taught generations of international lawyers at NUS Law, including coaching four teams that won the Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition. He led CIL through a period of extraordinary growth, quickly establishing it as a leader in research and capacity-building in the Asia-Pacific region.
The Honourable The Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon of the Supreme Court of Singapore said, “I am delighted that the Centre has been able to hire Lucy as its next Director. Lucy is one of the most highly respected practitioners and thinkers in the world in the areas of international law and international arbitration and her appointment will bring an extremely valuable perspective to the Centre. I also congratulate Prof Bob Beckman on completing his tenure at the Centre. Bob taught me at NUS Law and has been a good friend through the years. He has done tremendous work in laying the foundations on which Lucy can now continue to build and strengthen a world class institution.”
Professor Tommy Koh, Chairman of CIL’s Governing Board, said, “Bob Beckman has done a wonderful job as the founding director. In the short space of five years, he has put CIL on the world map as a leading centre for international law. Lucy is eminently qualified to succeed Bob, to consolidate what has been achieved and to take CIL to a higher peak.”
Professor Simon Chesterman, Dean of NUS Law, said, “Lucy Reed is the very model of a practitioner-scholar. She has reached the top of the profession, serving as counsel to private and public clients including governments and international organisations. At the same time, she has a deep and abiding engagement with the academic world, as both a speaker and an author. Bob Beckman has done an extraordinary job leading CIL over the past seven years. We are tremendously lucky that he will continue to head its Ocean Law and Policy programme, as well as working with Lucy as CIL writes its next chapter.”
Ms Reed said, “It is an honour and a privilege to be appointed to the Centre and NUS Faculty of Law. I have had the good fortune to learn and practise international law in many different private and public sector roles, and it is a dream-come-true to have this unique opportunity to bring all the strands together. I am also pleased to be staying in Singapore, where the legal and diplomatic communities have been extraordinarily welcoming, and to be able to engage from here with the panoply of international law issues we face regionally and globally. I thank Professor Beckman and the CIL Board, among others, for providing such a strong platform.”
Please refer to the Annex for Ms Lucy Reed’s biography.
About the Centre for International Law at NUS
CIL was established as a university-level research institute at NUS in 2009 in response to the growing need for international law thought leadership and capacity-building in the Asia-Pacific region. Since then, CIL has established itself as a regional intellectual hub and thought leader for research and training, as well as consultancy on key international law and policy developments in the following focus areas: ocean law and policy, ASEAN law and policy, trade and investment law and policy, and international dispute resolution. The Centre also organises conferences, workshops and seminars on international legal issues that have an impact on Southeast Asia and the Asia-Pacific region. CIL collaborates closely with a network of established partner and stakeholder organisations in Singapore and overseas to further the development of international law thought leadership in the region.
