Andy Altahawi has practiced international law for four decades. It is the older of his two professions, the one his career began in, and the reason the grant’s second area of giving is legal access.
Education and admission
Mr. Altahawi holds a Bachelor of Civil Law from Cairo University Law School, taken in 1986, and was admitted to the bar in 1988 as a Supreme Court attorney, with reciprocal practice rights in additional jurisdictions and regular co-counsel work alongside U.S.-admitted partners. He later earned a Doctor of Philosophy in finance from the University of Szeged.
He is an international non-U.S. attorney. Throughout his career, matters touching on U.S. law have been handled in coordination with U.S.-admitted attorneys — a co-counsel discipline that remains the rule of his practice today.
Strategic advisory across legal systems
Complex international matters rarely respect the boundaries of a single legal tradition. A joint venture may be negotiated under English law, financed through New York, performed in the Gulf, and disputed in Geneva. The practice is built for exactly that: coordinated strategy across parallel proceedings, harmonized documentation across jurisdictions, and counsel who understands how each forum’s rules interact with the others.
International commercial arbitration
Arbitration remains the world’s preferred forum for resolving cross-border commercial disputes — a neutral seat, flexible procedure, confidentiality, and awards enforceable in more than 170 states under the New York Convention. Mr. Altahawi has negotiated and arbitrated dozens of international commercial disputes through to final award, including:
- International sale, distribution, manufacturing, and licensing disputes
- Bermuda-form insurance and reinsurance arbitration
- Shareholder, joint-venture, and post-M&A disputes
- Construction and infrastructure claims
- Enforcement and challenge of arbitral awards
Cross-border corporate work
- Cross-border mergers and acquisitions — asset purchases, stock purchases, mergers, and leveraged buyouts
- International joint ventures, partnerships, and strategic alliances
- Drafting and negotiation of complex commercial, distribution, manufacturing, and licensing agreements
- Structuring of foreign issuers for compliant entry into U.S. capital markets, including foreign private issuer frameworks
- Corporate governance counsel to boards of directors of publicly traded companies, aligned with exchange and international standards
He has served as General Counsel to large multinational enterprises, and advises on questions of public international law that increasingly shape commercial outcomes — investment-treaty protection, sanctions exposure and compliance, natural resource and concession frameworks, and state responsibility.
Multijurisdictional litigation strategy
When disputes fragment across courts and tribunals in several countries, outcomes are decided as much by sequencing and forum strategy as by the merits. The practice coordinates parallel proceedings — aligning discovery, preserving privilege across borders, managing anti-suit considerations, and making sure a victory in one forum is not undone in another.
What this chapter gives the grant
Two things. The Altahawi Award in Law under Area I, for students entering the profession where this career began; and the whole of Area II — Legal Access Grants, for the clinics and pro bono programs that represent the people this practice, by its nature, never sees.