Javier Fernandez-Samaniego

Javier heads Osborne Clarke’s office in Miami, FL, a strategic business hub that is situated perfectly to support clients in the USA, Latin America and Europe and to work closely with our US team on both coasts.

A focus of Javier’s practice is assisting Osborne Clarke’s European clients in their expansion to Latin America and the USA, and vice-versa. He specializes in international dispute resolution and IT, privacy, cybersecurity and data law.

A born negotiator, Javier is known for his work in the prevention and resolution of international commercial conflicts. His expertise includes international litigation, arbitration, and mediation. He is an appointee Conciliator of the Kingdom of Spain and the Panel of Arbitrators and Conciliators of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes of the World Bank (ICSID).

Javier has a strong reputation as a leading IT lawyer and was one of the first privacy lawyers in Spain and Europe. His practice focuses on commercial and contentious advice related to major IT and transformational projects, ERP dispute resolution, global GDPR compliance, cybersecurity and trade secrets. He has worked in many digitalization and data-driven projects in various sectors, providing strategic legal support to both legal and governmental affairs professionals.

Javier has been repeatedly named by legal directories as one of the top international arbitrators and mediators and “star individual” of IT law.

Hon-Ariel Belen (RET.), FCIArb

Judge Belen is a highly experienced domestic and international mediator and arbitrator who has resolved a plethora of wide-ranging legal disputes including complex insurance, business and commercial, international and cross-border, employment, entertainment and sports, construction, personal injury and torts, and real estate matters. He joined JAMS in 2012 after nearly an eighteen-year tenure on the bench that included service as an Associate Justice of the New York State Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Second Department and as Administrative Judge of the Supreme Court, Kings County (Brooklyn). Judge Belen also helped create and presided over the New York State Supreme Court’s Commercial Division in Brooklyn.

Chambers and Partners has identified Judge Belen as one of a select group of mediators in the United States and has noted that he is “very personable and able to harmonize difficult personalities and issues such that everybody feels like the time spent negotiating a settlement is worthwhile.” He is a calm, intelligent, fair, and hardworking professional whose reputation as an individual who is able to resolve complex legal issues between the most deeply entrenched of parties is widely recognized and well-deserved.

Judge Belen is often retained as a Special Master in complex commercial and civil matters. He was appointed as the Federal Facilitator to guide the Joint Remedial Process in the New York City stop and frisk and trespass enforcement class action settlements as described in the Remedies Opinion in Floyd v. City of New York, 959 F. Supp. 2d 668 (SDNY 2013). In that guise, he was charged with assisting the City of New York and its residents in developing sustainable reforms to the stop and frisk and trespass enforcement practices of the New York City Police Department through a community based civic engagement process. His Final Report and Recommendations, filed with the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in May 2018, may be accessed here.

He is a highly sought-after domestic and international speaker and trainer for ADR-related topics. He has presented at ADR training and continuing legal education programs for judges, attorneys, and business leaders in the United States, Guatemala, Puerto Rico, and Mexico. He also serves as co-chair of the Litigation and Dispute Resolution Section of the Hispanic National Bar Association (HNBA). He is a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (CIArb), a fellow of the College of Commercial Arbitrators (CCA), a member of the CPR International Institute for Conflict Prevention and Resolution, a member of the International Mediation Institute, and the co-author of New York Trial Notebook (James Publishing, 2008), an 850-page comprehensive practice treatise for the trial of civil cases which is supplemented on an annual basis.

Judge Belen is a member of the Cornell Law School Dean’s Advisory Council and a member of the Board of Advisors of the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Scheinman Institute on Conflict Resolution.

Lisa Love Esq., FCIArb

Lisa is an accomplished arbitrator and mediator with over 35 years of experience as a transactional attorney focused on commercial transactions, corporate finance, construction, real estate, government and public agency, licensing and contract matters.

Ms. Love is trained in collaborative dispute resolution, mediation, arbitration and negotiation. She has experience in complex commercial, public and corporate finance, construction, infrastructure, project finance and development, public-private partnership, real estate development, securities, mergers and acquisitions, corporate governance, licensing, technology transfer, antitrust and contract matters. She has served as chief legal counsel to several public entities and has extensive experience managing both in-house and outside counsel.

Under her direction as a co-managing partner, Ms. Love’s law firm has represented federal and state public agencies, Fortune 100 companies, middle-market businesses and nonprofit corporations, including the U.S. Department of the Treasury, U.S. Department of Transportation’s Maritime Administration, Overseas Private Investment Corporation and Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Ms. Love is also a highly sought-after trainer, speaker, author and educator on topics relating to diversity in the legal and ADR fields.

Ms. Love has served as arbitrator in numerous administered and non-administered arbitration proceedings involving the New York Convention, the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law Arbitration Rules, the Federal Arbitration Act and various other institutional rules. Utilizing her deep commercial transactions experience, Ms. Love has served as sole arbitrator or panel member in over 60 commercial arbitrations involving corporate and commercial finance, banking, international franchising, international investments, mergers and acquisitions, breach of contract, securities and equity investments matters.