Company: Herbert Smith Freehills
Title: Solicitor
Age: 30
Ella Wisniewski is a disputes lawyer, specialising in international commercial arbitration and more specifically, on major construction, infrastructure and energy disputes. In 2017, she completed a Master of Laws in International Dispute Resolution at the Humboldt University in Berlin. Whilst based in Berlin, she worked at the German Institution of Arbitration and at a specialist arbitration firm as a visiting foreign lawyer, where (among other matters), she acted for a German manufacturer in an investor-state arbitration under the ICSID Convention. Since returning to Perth, she has applied her knowledge of cross-border dispute resolution to several complex matters across a range of sectors and industries including construction and infrastructure, energy, mining and resources. In conjunction with her practice at Herbert Smith Freehills, where she joined as a solicitor in October 2018, Wisniewski has maintained a keen interest in academic endeavours and continues to contribute to the current discourse around investor state dispute settlement. In 2018, she was awarded third place in the Nappert Prize in International Arbitration for her paper titled “A Changing Climate: The Future of ‘Legitimate Expectations’ in Energy Investment Disputes”, which was subsequently published in the ICC Dispute Resolution Bulletin (Issue 4, 2018).
