Zeina is a Partner at Obeid & Partners (Dubai, Paris, Beirut) where she practices in the litigation & Arbitration Department. She has the dual French and Lebanese nationalities.

She has acted as lead counsel in major international arbitration cases across the Middle East and North Africa region. She also acts as arbitrator and as an administrative secretary in several domestic and international arbitrations, both ad hoc and under international institutional arbitral rules, including those of the ICC, DIAC, LCIA, CRCICA, BCDR-AAA, and DIFC-LCIA.

Zeina holds a PhD from the University Panthéon-Assas (Paris II) in France and an LLM from Columbia University in New York. She also holds a dual Master II in Business Law in the Arab Countries as well as in Arbitration & ADR obtained at the
University Paris II and a Masters in Lebanese Law from the Lebanese University.

She frequently publishes articles on various topics notably in arbitration. In 2017, she published her book “Setting aside arbitral awards in the Arab Countries”, which has been cited as a reference book for practitioners around the MENA region.

She is a Fellow and tutor of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (CIArb). She has been elected in 2022 as Board Member of the CIArb- UAE Branch. She is also member  of  the  ICC  Commission on  arbitration &  ADR  and  member  of  the International Bar Association (IBA) where she holds the position of Officer in the IBA Young Lawyer’s Committee (as co-secretary) and previously served as Middle Eastern representative of the IBA Anti-Corruption Committee. Zeina is qualified to practice law both in Beirut and Paris and licensed in Dubai by the Legal Affairs Department.

Zeina is qualified to practice law both in Beirut and Paris and licensed in Dubai by the Legal Affairs Department.

Ziad Obeid is a partner at the firm. He has the dual French and Lebanese nationalities and is a dual-qualified lawyer with a civil engineering background, having extensive cross-border experience gained through legal practice in Europe and the Middle East.  Ziad has notable expertise in complex contractual arrangements and matters brought under bilateral investment treaties and international legal instruments.
 
Identified among the world’s foremost dispute resolution practitioners in GAR’s guide: Thought Leaders – Arbitration 2022, Ziad regularly acts as counsel, sole arbitrator, chairperson or co-arbitrator in  multifaceted international arbitrations conducted in Arabic, French and English brought both ad hoc and under a variety of institutional rules and subject to a wide range of applicable laws from within the MENA region and beyond.

Prior to his joining Obeid Law Firm, Ziad practiced for a number of years in the leading international arbitration practice of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP, based in Paris and thereafter in Dubai. At Freshfields, Ziad worked as part of teams advising on multi-million dollar cases brought under the ICSID Convention, the UNCITRAL, LCIA and ICC rules across the construction, oil and gas, power generation and telecoms sectors.

Ziad graduated from the University of London, Queen Mary (Diploma in International Commercial Arbitration with a  focus on construction and energy disputes), the  Université Paris II-Assas (Masters of  Civil  Law)  and  from  the Lebanese University (Bachelor of Law and Masters of Lebanese Law).   He also holds a Bachelor of Civil and Environmental Engineering from the  American University of Beirut (AUB) and an executive education diploma from Harvard Law School.

Ziad is a fellow of the International Academy of Construction Lawyers, member of the Task Force charged with proposing amendments for the revision of the ADR, Expertise and Dispute Board Rules issued by the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris, Member of the Editorial Board of the ICC Bulletin, Member of the advisory committee for the Lebanese Arbitration and Mediation Center, and Co- chair of SIAC’s Users Council Committee for the Middle East.  He is the author of numerous publications, namely the IBA arbitration guide (Lebanon), the GAR know-how Lebanon guides on Litigation, Commercial Arbitration and Investment Arbitration, the ILO arbitration survey (Lebanon) and the ICC guide on enforcement of New York convention (Lebanon).

Ziad is identified by Global Chambers as a leading lawyer and is described as “very, very intelligent and  exceptionally gifted”.    He has been consistently identified among the world’s leading dispute resolution lawyers featuring in Who’s Who Legal Construction, Commercial Arbitration and in the GAR’s guide: Thought Leaders – Arbitration 2020, as well as in Who’s Who Legal: Arbitration – Future Leaders – a guide to the world’s leading dispute resolution lawyers aged 45 or under.

Ziad is qualified to practice law both in Beirut and Paris and and licensed in Dubai by the Legal Affairs Department.

Ziad is trilingual in Arabic, French and English.

Professor Nayla Comair-Obeid has the dual French and Lebanese nationalities. She is the Founding Partner of Obeid & Partners and heads the firm’s dispute resolution practice. She  is  was  a  Professor of  private  law  and  international commercial arbitration at the Lebanese University – Faculty of Law. She is visiting Professor at University Panthéon-Assas Paris II, and lecturer at University of Oxford for the CIArb International Commercial Arbitration Diploma.

Her areas of expertise range from international business law and Islamic and Middle Eastern legislation to franchising, shareholder issues, commercial representation, licensing, administrative law, banking, insurance, telecommunication, construction, complex civil litigation and corporate and financial disputes.

Over the span of her 40-year’s career in litigation and international arbitration, Professor Comair-Obeid has represented major domestic and foreign corporate clients including states and governmental entities and has been, and continues to be, involved in the most significant disputes in the region and internationally.

She has also been actively involved in over 100 domestic and international arbitrations as a party appointed arbitrator, chairperson, sole arbitrator, counsel and expert in Arabic, French and English-language. These arbitrations were conducted both ad hoc and under a variety of International Arbitration Rules  (ICSID, ICC, LCIA, DIAC, CRCICA, BCDR, DIFC-LCIA, UNCITRAL, etc.) and the applicable laws of various countries (Lebanon, UAE, Qatar, Syria, Tunisia, Jordan, Egypt, India, France, Bahrain, United Kingdom, United States, Switzerland, Libya, Nigeria, Republic of Guinea, etc.).

Among the parties engaged in these arbitrations have been states and state entities, international investors, telecommunications corporations, construction companies, distributors of various kinds of goods and equipment, banks and financial institutions, real estate developers as well as hotel management corporations. In addition, she is often called upon as a legal expert on numerous aspects of Middle Eastern laws in foreign courts and arbitral proceedings.

Professor Comair-Obeid has authored The Law of Business Contracts in the Middle East (Kluwer Law) and numerous other publications in Arabic, French and English covering a range of legal fields including international contract law, international arbitration and Islamic finance. She is frequently invited to speak as a leading expert in her field and has held and continues to hold prominent positions in many of the major international arbitration institutions.

Throughout her career, Professor Comair-Obeid has held and continues to hold pre- eminent positions in many of the major international arbitration institutions.

Professor Comair-Obeid is the Vice-President of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) (as of June 2022) and has been a member of the ICC Executive Board since 2019. She has also been recently appointed the Chair of the Jury of the ICC Institute Prize (2023 edition) and is a member of the Council of the ICC Institute of World Business Law.

Professor Comair-Obeid is also Companion of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (CIArb) and has served as President of this institution in 2017. She was also the former Chair of the Institute’s Board of Trustees.

She has been appointed in 2018 as Member of the China’s International Commercial Expert Committee of the Supreme People’s Court.

She sits on the ICSID panel of arbitrators and is a member of the ICSID panel of conciliators designated by the president of the World Bank. She is a member of the council of the Institute of World Business Law of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) in Paris; Trustee of the Cairo Regional Centre for International Commercial Arbitration Board of Trustees; member of the LCIA Court in London, former commissioner of the United Nations Compensation Commission (UNCC) in Geneva; and former vice chair of the arbitration committee in the International Bar Association.

Professor Comair-Obeid obtained a D.E.A. in Business Law (1980), a Masters degree in Lebanese and French Law from St. Joseph University (Lebanon) and Lyon II-Jean Moulin University (France), and a PhD in Business Law from the University Paris II, Panthéon-Assas (1994).

Professor Comair-Obeid is trilingual in Arabic, French and English. She admitted at the Beirut Bar and the Paris Bar. She is also an Associate Member at 3VB Barristers Chambers in London.