Jennifer Haworth McCandless is an international disputes partner and serves as legal counsel in complex, high-stakes international arbitration cases, focusing, in particular, on investor-state arbitration. She has advised and represented both private sector investors (the claimants) and sovereigns (the respondents) in international arbitral proceedings before ICSID and its Additional Facility, the ICC, and other arbitral institutions around the world. She has also handled international commercial arbitrations, often involving state or state-owned entities. Her cases span the full range of economic sectors, including electricity, mining, oil and gas, infrastructure, real estate development, and financial services, and cover the globe, with a particular emphasis on the Americas. She has also advised and represented private parties and governments in WTO disputes. In addition, she counsels clients on the implications of investment rules for their global operations.
Jennifer is consistently recognized for her arbitration work. She is ranked by Chambers Global (2021-2023) as well as the 2020-2023 editions of Chambers USA and the 2023 edition of Chambers Latin America in International Arbitration, where clients say she "has a global vision of a case and gets into every detail, leaving no gaps." Jennifer is listed as a recommended lawyer in International Arbitration by The Legal 500 Latin America (2013-2014) and The Legal 500 (2014-2015). In the 2023 edition of The Legal 500 Jennifer is praised as "outstanding" and "never tires of responding to questions." She is also named as one of the "Top 250 Women in Litigation" by Benchmark (2023). Jennifer was recognized by Latinvex as one of Latin America's "Top 100 Female Lawyers" in 2018, 2019 and 2023 for her work in international arbitration. In 2019, Jennifer was recognized by Euromoney as one of the "Top 30 Commercial Arbitration Experts in the United States" and she had received the "Best in Commercial Arbitration Award" in 2018. In 2022, she was recognized in "International Arbitration - Governmental" by Best Lawyers.
Jennifer has spoken on international arbitration and investor-state dispute resolution at multiple seminars and workshops throughout the D.C. area and internationally, including at seminars and workshops sponsored by American University's Washington College of Law, the U.S. Council for International Business’s Young Arbitrators Forum, the International Law Section of the D.C. Bar, Harvard University's International Arbitration Law Students Association, and the Madrid Center for International Arbitration. Jennifer also served as a member of the Investment Subcommittee of the U.S. State Department's Advisory Committee on International Economic Policy Regarding the U.S. Model Bilateral Investment Treaty in 2009 and Regarding the Implementation of the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises in 2010.
In addition, Jennifer served for a number of years as the chair of the Joint Swearing-In Ceremony for the U.S. Court of International Trade and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit sponsored by the International Law Section of the ABA.
Prior to entering private practice, Jennifer had legal internships with the U.S. Trade Representative’s (USTR) office of General Counsel in Washington, D.C., and with the USTR’s Office in Geneva, Switzerland. She also was a legal intern at the United Nations in New York and has worked in Washington D.C. at the World Bank.
Jennifer's experience as legal counsel includes the following:
