Senior Counsel since 2018, John Buckley was a partner for almost four decades. His practice focuses on domestic and international commercial arbitration and investor-state arbitration. John has been lead counsel in cases administered under the AAA/ICDR, ICC, ICSID and HKIAC rules. He is the founder and former head of the firm’s international arbitration practice group. A Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, he has served as chair, co-arbitrator, or sole arbitrator in AAA, CPR, ICC and ICDR administered arbitrations and in ad hoc arbitration. John’s experience in arbitration and litigation spans a wide range of industries and issues, including energy, oil & gas (upstream/midstream/downstream, exploration, production, joint operating agreements, drilling rig rates, gas gathering, refining, price review/redetermination, hedging, trading, oil contracts, electric generation)
- patents (infringement, standard-essential patents, FRAND royalty rates, IP licensing)
- biotechnology, medical devices
- foreign and U.S. investment (M&A, share purchase, shareholding agreements, joint venture, partnerships)
- civil engineering and construction
- financial transactions
- derivatives (including futures, options, swaps, mortgage-backed securities, ISDA contracts)
- professional liability, ethics and malpractice.
From 2015 to 2020, John was Visiting Clinical Lecturer at Yale Law School, where he taught Advocacy in International Arbitration. He has been consistently listed as among the top U.S. commercial arbitration practitioners in Euromoney’s Guide to the World’s Leading Experts in Commercial Arbitration and is frequently an invited speaker at arbitration conferences. John is an arbitrator on the Dispute Settlement Roster of the U.S.-Canada-Mexico Agreement (USMCA), appointed by the United states, for resolving State-to-State disputes. He is a member of the Roster of Arbitrators of the American Arbitration Association (AAA) and the International Centre for Dispute Resolution (ICDR). He is also a member of the Panel of Distinguished Neutrals of the International Institute for Conflict Prevention and Resolution (CPR), CPR’s General Commercial Panel of arbitrators, and CPR’s specialty panels for International/Cross Border, Energy, Oil & Gas, and Hedge Fund disputes. In addition, he is listed on the arbitrator rosters of the International Arbitration Institute (Paris), the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, The Roster of International Arbitrators, Juris, Second Edition, Global Arbitration Review Database of arbitrators, and the USCIB/ICC USA Database of arbitrators.
He is a member of the CPR Council and CPR’s Arbitration Committee, is co-chair of CPR’s Administered Rules Revision Committee and Model Clause Task Force, and is chair of its Fast Track Rules Revision Committee. His other memberships include USCIB/ICC USA Arbitration Committee, the ICC Task Force on ADR and Arbitration, the International Bar Association’s Arbitration Committee, the London Court of International Arbitration’s North American Users’ Council, and the Advisory Board of the Institute for Transnational Arbitration (ITA).
In 2021 John became the inaugural recipient of the CPR Institute's Partner of the Year Award for his contributions to CPR and alternative dispute resolution.
John earned his A.B., magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, from Georgetown University and his J.D., with honors, from The University of Chicago, where he was Editor-in-Chief of The University of Chicago Law Review and was elected to the Order of the Coif. After law school, he clerked first for Judge John Minor Wisdom of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and then for Associate Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr. John next joined the Justice Department and served for two years as special assistant to U.S. Attorney General Edward H. Levi.
John has served on The University of Chicago Law School’s Visiting Committee, and as a trustee of the Board of Governors of Beauvoir, the National Cathedral Elementary School. For over two decades, he has served as counsel to the Girl Scout Council of the Nation’s Capital, which presented him with the Officers’ Award, its highest award for service to the Council. Recognitions
Fellow, American College of Trial Lawyers 
Fellow, Chartered Institute of Arbitrators Elected Member, American Law Institute “Top U.S. Commercial Arbitration Practitioners,” Euromoney’s Guide to the World’s Leading Experts in Commercial Arbitration Other Government ServiceSpecial Assistant to Hon. Edward H. Levi, United States Attorney General, Department of Justice, 1975-1977 |
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