Helen Elmer is an English-qualified associate in the Dubai office of Gibson Dunn and a member of the firm's International Arbitration and Litigation practice groups, having practised in Hong Kong, London and Dubai. She specialises in international arbitration and complex commercial litigation, acting for multinational corporations, construction and investment firms and sovereign governments in M&A, investment, infrastructure and energy disputes, and in matters involving fraud and white-collar crime.
Helen is the lead associate on the team representing a major international engineering company in a multi-billion-dollar ICC arbitration against a Middle Eastern state arising from an infrastructure project. She acts in arbitrations under all the major institutional rules, against both sovereign and private parties, and litigates at interlocutory, trial and appellate levels before the High Court of England and Wales, the Privy Council and the UAE courts in Abu Dhabi, ADGM, Dubai and the DIFC. She has been part of the expansion of Gibson Dunn's Middle East practice, and in 2025 her team was named International Arbitration Team of the Year at the Law.com International Middle East Legal Awards.
Beyond acting as counsel, Helen led an extensive reform of the ADGM Court Rules, Regulations and Practice Directions, creating a new Division of the ADGM Courts and introducing a Fast Track in the Civil and Commercial Division for the first time. She co-authored the chapter "Oil and Gas Arbitration in the Middle East: Key Considerations" in the 2026 textbook Energy and the Energy Transition in the Middle East, and since 2025 has taught an undergraduate arbitration class at New York University Abu Dhabi.
Helen was admitted as a Solicitor of the Senior Courts of England and Wales in 2018 and obtained rights of audience before the civil higher courts in 2023.
Capabilities
Credentials
Education:
- BPP Law School - 2016 Legal Practice Course
- Kaplan Law School - 2014 Graduate Diploma in Law
- University of Oxford - 2013 Bachelor of Arts
Admissions:
- England & Wales - Solicitor
News & Insights
Article
Gibson Dunn Lawyers Serve as Contributing Editor and Co-Authors of Globe Law and Business’s “Energy in the Middle East: From Black Gold to Green Horizons”
Global Competition Review
Gibson Dunn Receives Prestigious GCR Behavioural Matter of the Year – Europe Award
Client Alert
Reform in the ADGM Courts: Introduction of the Real Property Division and a Fast Track in the Commercial and Civil Division