Anastasiya Ugale

I am an independent international arbitration counsel, admitted to the Washington, D.C. and New York bars, and based in Washington, D.C.

Over the past fifteen years, I have worked on seventeen investor-State arbitrations under the ICSID Convention, the UNCITRAL Arbitration Rules, and other institutional frameworks, as well as international commercial arbitrations under the ICC, LCIA, and SCC rules.

My practice is focused on investor-State dispute settlement (ISDS) and international commercial arbitration, with particular depth in:

• ICSID Arbitration Rules; I am co-author of an authoritative commentary on the 2022 ICSID Arbitration Rules.
• The bilateral and multilateral investment treaty network of the CIS, Central Asia, the Balkans, and the Baltic states.

I have acted in disputes arising under bilateral investment treaties including, for example, the Canada–USSR, Netherlands–Uzbekistan, Turkey–Uzbekistan, USA–Moldova, and Latvia–Ukraine bilateral investment treaties, as well as under the Energy Charter Treaty and other investment instruments.

My cases have spanned the energy, mining, technology, infrastructure, food and hospitality, and telecommunications sectors, typically in the range of USD 10–500 million in dispute.

I am also a Member of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (MCIArb).

Access resources on my arbitration practice

I opened my independent practice in 2017, after almost a decade in large international law firms and international organizations, advising on public international law and representing sovereign states, investors, and corporate entities in treaty and commercial arbitrations across multiple jurisdictions and arbitral fora.

International arbitration has long been structured around large-firm economics: high hourly rates, deep teams, and overhead that clients absorb whether or not it serves their case. That model works for some disputes. But it also prices out a significant share of clients with legitimate treaty or complex cross-border claims and no realistic path to pursue them.

I left to build something different.

My services do not price at a discount — they price at efficiency.

More than fifteen years of hands-on arbitration work mean:

• No learning curve on your file.
• No ramp-up costs for basic doctrine or procedure.
• No reinvention of procedural strategy with every new case.

I build on established frameworks and I build with technology: proprietary tools developed through One Joule, my legal technology lab, that reduce the document-intensive, repetitive work that drives costs in complex arbitration.

In practical terms, this means you pay for senior judgment, applied efficiently, through right-sized cross-border teams, supported by bespoke legal technology.

That model has opened doors for clients who would otherwise never have accessed investor-State arbitration or complex cross-border commercial arbitration. That is the point.

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