Paolo is a lawyer admitted to practice in Italy and registered as a European lawyer with the Bar of England and Wales. He specialises in public international law, arbitration and general dispute settlement. His international practice covers a wide range of matters, with a focus on investment law, law of the sea, land and maritime boundaries, law of international organisations, international recovery of works of art and human rights. Paolo also brings to his legal practice expertise in complex diplomatic negotiations and experience in assisting international adjudicatory bodies, which he developed while working as an Assistant Legal Counsel at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague.
Paolo is an external advisor to the Italian Ministry of Home Affairs on issues of international law and has been selected as an expert with the General Legal Affair Service of the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations. He assists States, international organizations and private companies. In addition to advisory work, he is currently involved in matters pending before Annex VII Arbitral Tribunals, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea and investment Tribunals.
Before joining Chambers, Paolo practiced international law in a number of capacities. As a senior legal consultant to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations in Riyadh he advised the Saudi Government on law of the sea and international law of fisheries. At the Permanent Court of Arbitration, he assisted arbitral Tribunals in inter-State disputes regarding the UNCLOS, such as the Chagos Marine Protected Area Arbitration (Mauritius v UK) and the Atlanto-Scandian Herring Arbitration (The Kingdom of Denmark in respect of the Faroe Islands v the European Union); and in investment disputes, including Yukos Universal Limited v The Russian Federation (damages) and OAO Gazprom v The Republic of Lithuania.
Before this, he trained as a lawyer for two years with the Office of the Attorney General of Italy, where he was assigned to the Deputy Attorney General. He assisted the Italian Republic in international negotiations and high profile contentious matters, including a dispute against the Jean Paul Getty Museum of Malibu for the recovery of the Victorious Youth of Lysippus, based on the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property; a dispute against Sotheby’s in London for the recovery of ancient manuscripts and the case EU Commission et al v Kadi before the Grand Chamber of the Court of Justice of the European Union (Kadi II). While at university, he interned with Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP, where he was involved in some of the cases stemming from the Argentinean bond crisis.
Paolo taught courses on the case law of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the University of Milan Statale and is a regular lecturer for the Italian Armed Forces on issues of international law and international humanitarian law.
He holds degrees from Luiss University in Rome and from the University of Cambridge, where he returned after his LLM as a visiting fellow at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law. In 2011, he was awarded the Daniele Padovani Prize for international procedural law by the Italian Society of International Law.