Biography: Arbitration

Ben Sheppard is a distinguished lecturer at the University of Houston Law Center and the director of the AA White Dispute Resolution Center. From 1969 to 2005 he practised at Vinson & Elkins LLP and was partner and co-chair of the firm's international dispute resolution practice focusing on litigation and – as arbitrator and counsel – on arbitration.

He has served in international and domestic arbitrations as sole arbitrator, tribunal chair, party-appointed arbitrator and on tripartite tribunals selected from institutional rosters.

Representative arbitration engagements include: exploration and development agreements; liquefied natural gas price disputes; gas storage and management agreements; operator's charges for rig rates, salt water disposal, office overhead and tubulars in the energy sector, as well as trade secrets regarding blast furnace technology; construction contracts; valuation of interest in petrochemical plant; dispute over fitness of combustion generators used in electric power plants; licence agreements in the credit reporting industry; asset purchase agreements; contracts for the international sale of goods; and commercial real estate leases.

Mr Sheppard is on the AAA's roster of neutrals for the commercial and energy panels and on the AAA/ICDR international panel. He is also on the energy, oil and gas, and international panels of the CPR Institute for Conflict Prevention and Resolution as well as the CPR energy committee and international committee on arbitration.

Mr Sheppard was chair of the AAA/ICDR task force on pre-arbitral emergency arbitrator procedure and chair of the disputes division of the ABA Section of International Law.

He was author of the report and recommendation to the ABA House of Delegates in support of the 2004 revision to AAA/ABA Code of Ethics for Arbitrators in Commercial Disputes. He was chair of one of the two working groups that promulgated the CPR Protocol on Disclosure of Documents and Presentation of Witnesses in Commercial Arbitration.

He was co-editor of Take the Witness: Cross-Examination in International Arbitration (Juris 2010) and of The AAA Yearbook on Arbitration & the Law, 23rd Edition (Juris 2011).

Mr Sheppard graduated with high honours from the University of Texas School of Law in 1968, and was law clerk to the Honourable Homer Thornberry US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit from 1968 to 1969.