Samuel Stern is a recognized expert in the reform of legal infrastructure in countries moving to open-market economies.  He has extensive experience advising governments and private sector entities in respect of legal infrastructure for oil and gas, power, mining, and water.  Mr. Stern has served as counsel or advisor to the governments of over 40 countries; and has been a senior legal participant in surveys of the foreign investment climate in Mexico and Venezuela; and of the role of law in the development process in South Korea; and advised a number of countries on the development of their natural resource laws.  Mr. Stern has extensive experience in privatization, particularly of utilities and power, including in China, the Philippines, India, Dominican Republic, Malaysia, and Jamaica. He has lectured at conferences around the world and published in professional journals on government regulation, foreign investment/finance, project finance and trade and risk management.  Mr. Stern serves as an arbitrator, advocate, or expert in international commercial arbitrations.  Before joining the firm, Mr. Stern was a senior partner (and member of the management committee of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering and of Dickstein Shapiro, and counsel to Rogers & Wells (now Clifford Chance US LLP). He served as a Visiting Professor from Practice at Harvard Law School, an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown Law Center, lecturer at Yale, Cambridge, and Sussex Universities, and a board member of the International Law institute. Mr. Stern is a member of the Bar Association of the District of Columbia.

Mr. Stern studied economics at the University of Pennsylvania and law at Harvard Law School, where he was an officer of the Law Review.  He was a law clerk to Chief Justice Earl Warren.