Marinn Carlson focuses her practice in international dispute settlement, with an emphasis on investment disputes, including investor-state arbitration and international commercial arbitration. She has represented foreign investors as well as respondent governments in ICSID and UNCITRAL arbitrations under investment treaties and trade agreements, including NAFTA. She has represented corporate clients in a wide range of institutional and ad hoc international commercial arbitrations. She has also represented clients in U.S. litigation with international ramifications, and as amici curiae in foreign affairs, intellectual property, and Commerce Clause cases before the United States Supreme Court and various courts of appeal. She counsels clients in sectors ranging from financial services to energy to infrastructure development on the implications of international trade and investment rules for their global operations.

Ms. Carlson has spoken at conferences and taught classes, workshops, and seminars on a wide range of topics in international arbitration, including investor-state arbitration case law and practice as well as arbitration advocacy skills. She is a member of the Executive Committee of the Foundation for International Arbitration Advocacy (FIAA), the Budget and Finance Chair (and previously an Executive Council member) of the American Society of International Law (ASIL), and she serves on the Board of Directors of the CAIR Coalition, a Washington, D.C. legal services organization focused on immigrants’ rights.

Before entering private practice, Ms. Carlson clerked for Judge José A. Cabranes of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. She also worked in several organizations with a focus on trade and its intersection with environmental policy, including the Environmental Defense Fund and the White House Office on Environmental Policy.

Ms. Carlson has been named as one of the Top 250 Women in Litigation, a publication honoring the achievements of female lawyers in dispute resolution practices in the United States. She has also been recommended in International Arbitration in The Legal 500 US and in The Legal 500 Latin America 2013 and 2014 and has been recognized by Benchmark Litigation as a “Litigation Star” nationally (2015) and as a “Local Litigation Star” in Washington, D.C. (2014–2015). Additionally, The Best Lawyers in America (2012–2016) has listed Ms. Carlson as a “Best Lawyer” in International Arbitration – Commercial and International Arbitration – Governmental. Ms. Carlson has also been recognized by Latinvex as one of Latin America’s Top 100 Female Lawyers (2016) in Arbitration and Litigation.