Clifford Chance lawyer Alex Panayides reflects on his career journey and the exciting work he has undertaken along the way
“I came to Britain at the age of eight, having left Cyprus as a refugee when Turkey invaded in 1974,” says Alex Panayides, dispute resolution partner at Clifford Chance. Speaking over fifty years later, Panayides has built a career studded with high-profile cases. From insurance litigation following the 9/11 attacks, to the controversies around the Qatar World Cup 2022, to litigating the salvage rights to the wreck of RMS “TITANIC” — the list is impressive.
A Clifford Chance ‘lifer’, the firm first caught Panayides’ attention during his second year at university. Reading law at Oxford University — but “without any firm intention to become a lawyer” — Panayides recalls “one of my rare visits to the college library” during which he discovered “fellow law students filling in application forms for what were then called articles, now training contracts.” With Britain’s economy in decline in the early 1990s and graduate jobs scarce, he sent out a few speculative applications in the hope of securing a role.
Clifford Chance “stood out” because of its international outlook. “At that time, the firm was expanding into Europe when the majority of London firms were very, or in fact exclusively, UK focused,” Panayides explains — an attractive prospect for a globally-minded student. Training contract secured, he joined Clifford Chance, became a partner in 2002 and, 30-something years later after joining the firm, he’s still there. He is a partner in the litigation and dispute resolution practice, leads the firm’s oi & gas disputes practice and the disputes practice in Africa.
During his training, Panayides sampled a range of practice areas — property, banking, even a stint in New York — but it was the firm’s shipping department that ultimately hooked him. “It was awesome, frankly,” he tells me. “I did all kinds of fun work that was in the news and enormous amounts of travelling.” In the pre-email era, Panayides had to get to where the work was, spending much of his time as a young lawyer working from shipyards around the world, from Singapore to Brazil to Mississippi. This was “a wonderful way to learn”, not least as he was able to get a taste of an “extremely unusual” mixture of transactional and disputes work.
Later in his career Panayides chose to focus full-time on disputes. I am keen to know what it was about contentious work that appeals to him. “Because I find it perpetually interesting and varied,” he replies. “No two disputes have been the same, and I still learn something new every day”. Over the course of his career Panayides has tackled “the sorts of problems that people don’t believe can be solved.” Illustrating this point, he jumps back into one matter in particular: “I spent about 10 years arguing about whether 9/11 was an act of war, or an act of terrorism,” he tells me, “which of course had enormous repercussions in numerous contexts, including insurance and finance” Panayides found himself “navigating law and politics on a topic that was not just in the headlines; it was the headline for so long.” Commuting back and forth from New York “on some occasions on Concorde” was also “extremely exciting for a relatively young lawyer.”
Another career highlight he singles out is a pro bono project for Save the Children which held a deeply personal resonance. “Save the Children decided, with exceptional ambition, to procure, crew and deploy a rescue ship to pick up refugees in the Mediterranean.” The project came off in record time: “It was an amazing success,” Panayides reflects. He recalls that “Save the Children, when I started working with them on this, didn’t know that I myself had been a child refugee who had crossed the Mediterranean in a small boat some years previously — for them that was just mind-blowing.”
With a career spent at the sharp end of global disputes, Panayides has witnessed first-hand how world events can upend the business landscape. I ask what key geopolitical issues are occupying his clients right now. “If one had to distil everything that’s going on into one word, it would be ‘uncertainty’,” he replies. That uncertainty, he explains, is the most “challenging thing for markets and governments because it chills investment decisions and can cloud the intentions and plans of politicians”. US trade tariffs, China’s developing global ambitions, conflict in Europe and the Middle East have all contributed to the volatile environment. For clients trying to navigate these choppy waters, this is “obviously extremely challenging”. We live in an age of information overload — “there is much more data and information and insight available to any of us with a computer than at any previous time in history,” Panayides says. This “puts a real premium on the skills required to declutter an issue and really understand what’s going on at its core”.
Even having just scratched the surface of Panayides’ career it’s not hard to see why he finds the work engaging, but there are two other key factors which mean he loves his job: the firm’s people, and its culture. “We’re not at all hierarchical. We like to have a laugh even in the challenging and difficult moments,” he says. “It’s always a team effort.”
As we wrap up our discussion, I am keen to hear Panayides’ advice for aspiring lawyers. “Keep an open mind,” he says. “The training contract is a wonderful opportunity to experience lots of different kinds of law.” He would discourage law students from having a rigid idea of where they want to qualify. “Have an idea by all means,” he says, “but when you start rotating through the practice areas, give your best effort in all of them because you might surprise yourself about what you actually enjoy. And choosing an area you find genuinely stimulating is crucial: “The demands can be immense,” Panayides admits, “but it’s amazing how hard you can work and still be cheerful if what you’re doing is what you enjoy.”
Alex Panayides will be speaking on the panel at ‘Geopolitical risk, trade and the law — with Clifford Chance’, a hybrid student event taking place TOMORROW (Thursday 4 September). In-person spots are now fully-booked but you can still apply to attend virtually.
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