Margarita Nikki Michael is a solicitor-advocate with full rights of audience before the English courts. Her extensive practice includes cross-border dispute resolution, particularly international arbitration and High Court litigation. Margarita is also a CEDR Accredited Mediator.

Margarita acts for a diverse range of prominent clients including governments, international organisations, and private clients and often acts as lead counsel on matters.

She has both written and spoken about international arbitration and English civil litigation at various fora, and is the author of several publications focused primarily on state immunity, enforcement of arbitral awards and public international law.

Through her representation and advice to clients in complex international commercial arbitrations, Margarita is well accustomed to all leading arbitral rules such as ICC, LCIA and VIAC as well as in ad hoc proceedings. One of her most notable experiences is her work on one of Europe’s largest gas price review arbitrations completed with the support of the ICC.

Margarita also advises on white-collar criminal defence litigation and corporate internal investigations, as well as on sanctions and corporate compliance programmes.

She is a member of the ICC, LCIA and YIAG.

  • Margarita’s performance and ability has been exemplary. She stands out as a client-focused lawyer, who is both sharp in case strategy, effective in communicating, and focused always on producing good outcomes for me as a client.

    Managing Partner
    Greensphere Capital LLP

  • Margarita is a super intelligent and amazingly creative thinker who is able to find out-of-the-box solutions other lawyers cannot – and then perform them with surprising ease. She fully invests herself in every case she handles, an extremely rare quality of “living” the client's case that most other lawyers lack. Margarita's combination of talent, technical knowledge, experience and dedication to clients is truly unmatched. It was a great pleasure to work with her on a difficult multinational case, in the outcome of which she delivered an absolutely stunning result that was beyond everyone’s most optimistic expectations.

    Managing Partner
    Litigation Support Services LLC