Victoria R. Orlowski is of counsel in the New York office of Gibson Dunn and a member of the International Arbitration, Judgment and Arbitral Award Enforcement, Litigation and Transnational Litigation Practice Groups.
Victoria represents companies, investors and individuals in high-stakes international arbitrations, arbitration-related litigation and multijurisdictional award and judgment enforcement proceedings. Victoria is one of the few practitioners with both counsel-side and senior institutional ICC experience. She brings more than two decades of disputes experience and extensive experience translating arbitral and court victories into recoveries.
She advises clients across the full life cycle of a disputes—from pre-dispute strategy and arbitral procedure through hearings, post-award challenges, recognition, asset tracing and recovery. Victoria regularly leads matters involving parallel proceedings and complex questions of arbitral procedure, sovereign immunity, jurisdiction, service, enforcement and creditor strategy. Her matters have involved commercial and investment treaty proceedings under the ICC, LCIA, ICSID, UNCITRAL and AAA Rules. She has served as an arbitrator, including an am ICC Court-appointed role.
Victoria’s experience spans technology and intellectual property, energy and infrastructure, mining and metals, telecommunications, aviation, financial services, real estate and sovereign disputes. She also regularly advises clients and transactional teams on arbitration and alternative dispute resolution provisions and designs procedures tailored to the commercial objectives of particular relationships or disputes.
Before joining Gibson Dunn, Victoria spent six years at the Secretariat of the ICC International Court of Arbitration in Paris, ultimately serving as Managing Counsel. She advised the ICC Court on hundreds of arbitral awards, arbitrator challenges, jurisdictional issues and other sensitive decisions; supervised international arbitration case-management teams; and helped launch the ICC Court Secretariat’s New York case-management team. This experience gives her distinctive insight into ICC procedure, tribunal constitution, challenges to arbitrators, jurisdictional issues and the ICC’s award-scrutiny process. Before joining the ICC, Victoria practiced at White & Case in New York.
Victoria is President of the Standing Committee of the ICC International Centre for ADR, a position she has held since 2021. In her role, she appoints experts and dispute board members, deciding jurisdictional objections and challenges to arbitrators, scrutinizing expert reports and advises the Centre on related matters. Victoria serves as an ex officio member of the Steering Committee of the ICC Commission on Arbitration and ADR. She contributed to the revision of the 2026 ICC Rules of Arbitration, which entered into force on June 1, 2026.
Representative Experience
International Arbitration
- Obtaining a highly favorable February 2026 award for a global technology company in a multimillion-dollar ICC arbitration involving patent claims. Victoria led key aspects of the procedural strategy, negotiations with opposing counsel, submissions to the tribunal and ICC, and hearing organization; the tribunal rejected the claimant’s principal patent claim and substantially limited recovery on the remaining claim.
- Obtaining a successful result for a technology company in an ICC arbitration involving intellectual-property ownership, trade-secret misuse and contractual rights arising from a technology collaboration and licensing agreement.
- Representing Sea Search Armada in an investment treaty arbitration against Colombia concerning rights associated with the San José galleon.
- Obtaining favorable rulings for a private client in a complex AAA arbitration and related New York proceedings, including successfully arguing a novel standing issue and defeating multiple threshold defenses.
- Achieving a favorable settlement for a U.S. energy company in a multibillion-dollar fair-market-valuation dispute involving an ICC arbitration, related New York court proceedings and ICC Pre-Arbitral Referee Proceedings.
- Securing a jurisdictional award against Russia in a high-profile Yukos-related arbitration under the Energy Charter Treaty and defending the award in Canadian set-aside proceedings.
- Winning a favorable multimillion-dollar award for an aircraft manufacturer in an ICC arbitration concerning commercial aircraft leases in the UAE.
Award Enforcement and Transnational Litigation
- Developing and implementing the successful global enforcement strategy for Tethyan Copper Company’s $6 billion ICSID award against Pakistan, resulting in successful settlement.
- Coordinating ArcelorMittal’s global efforts to enforce a nearly $1.5 billion award against Essar Steel, leading to a successful confidential settlement.
- Directing the day-to-day strategy for a multinational steel company in a current multijurisdictional campaign to enforce nine-figure arbitral awards, together with related ICC and LCIA proceedings, asset-tracing and creditor-priority issues.
- Representing an engineering services company in an SDNY action to enforce an ICC award against a foreign central bank, including navigating service and default procedures under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act.
- Representing an award creditor in U.S. and European proceedings to enforce an ICSID award against a sovereign, including preserving enforcement proceedings while annulment proceedings remain pending.
- Advising a North American energy company on pre-award asset tracing and enforcement planning in connection with a high-value construction dispute.
- Successfully opposing enforcement of a multibillion-dollar sham arbitral award allegedly rendered against Chevron.
- Obtaining summary judgment for PDL BioPharma on unpaid guarantees and for City National Bank under a loan agreement and guarantee.
Professional Leadership and Thought Leadership
Victoria regularly writes and speaks on international arbitration, alternative dispute resolution and award enforcement. In 2026, she was invited to speak at Rajah & Tann’s Paris Arbitration Week program, “Beyond the Passport: Is Nationality a Reliable Proxy for Neutrality?” She also conceived and organized Gibson Dunn’s Paris Arbitration Week program with Burford Capital, “Piercing and Protecting the Sovereign Veil: The State of Play.”
Selected Publications
- “Investment Treaty Arbitration under the Energy Charter Treaty,” LexisNexis Practical Guidance (with Charline O. Yim, Ankita Ritwik and Praharsh Johorey; updated in 2026 for the Modernised ECT).
- “The Hearing: The Arbitral Tribunal’s Perspective,” Chapter 51 in International Arbitration in Practice (Courtney Lotfi, Alicja Zielińska-Eisen & Verónica Sandler Obregón eds., Kluwer Law International 2025) (co-authored with Rahim Moloo).
- “A Practical Introduction to Baseball Arbitration,” Russian Arbitration Association Journal (2022).
- “The Energy Charter Treaty,” in Global Arbitration Review: The Guide to Energy Arbitrations, 4th ed. (2020) (co-author).
- “FAA Section 10 Applications to Vacate an Award (Including Manifest Disregard),” in International Arbitration in the United States (Kluwer 2018).
- “Using Experts as Adjudicators: Meeting the Demand for Dynamic Dispute Resolution with ICC Expert Rules,” ICC Dispute Resolution Bulletin, 2017, Issue 3.
Credentials
Victoria is admitted to practice in New York and before the U.S. District Courts for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York. She earned her Juris Doctor, cum laude, with a specialization in international legal studies from Cornell Law School where she was a managing editor of the Cornell International Law Journal, and her Bachelor of Arts from Emory University, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She is fluent in English and French and speaks Swedish.
Capabilities
Credentials
Education:
- Cornell University - 2003 Juris Doctor
- Emory University - 2000 Bachelor of Arts
Admissions:
- New York Bar