Biography • Trade & Customs

Nicolas Lockhart is a partner in Sidley's Geneva office and a member of the firm's International Trade and Arbitration Group, with a practice that focuses on the development and enforcement of international trade rules, in particular at the World Trade Organization (WTO). His clients include companies, trade associations, and governments, and he helps them address market access, and other regulatory issues concerning trade in goods and services.

Drawing on more than 15 years in the field of international dispute settlement, Mr Lockhart offers clients an in-depth knowledge of WTO practice, procedures, and substantive law. He has a wide WTO practice that is characterised by diversity. He has worked with WTO members as complainants, respondents and third parties in numerous disputes involving: anti-dumping measures; customs valuation; import and export licensing and quotas; intellectual property rights; national and most-favoured nation treatment; sanitary measures; subsidies; technical regulations and standards; and the transparency and administration of trade measures. He has also worked on disputes touching on WTO exceptions for public morality, public health, conservation of natural resources, customs enforcement, and free trade agreements.

Mr Lockhart complements his dispute settlement work with policy-related advice to clients in the context of the Doha Development Round of trade negotiations. He has counselled WTO Members and commercial stakeholders in relation to agricultural and industrial subsidies, anti-dumping and countervailing measures, dispute settlement rules, and services.

Mr Lockhart received his LLM from Harvard Law School in 1993, his diploma in legal practice from the University of Edinburgh in 1992 and his LLB, with first class honours, from the same institution in 1991. He is a qualified solicitor in Scotland.