JMILES & CO - Key Persons
Elizabeth is an advocate of the High Court of Kenya with over 5 years' experience in representing clients in international arbitration disputes under the International Chamber of Commerce Rules (ICC), the London Court of International Arbitration Rules (LCIA) and ad-hoc arbitrations under the UNCITRAL Arbitration Rules and the English Arbitration Act. Elizabeth has also represented clients in negotiation and settlement discussions. Elizabeth has a background in corporate and commercial law, real estate and finance and civil litigation in Kenya.
John has experience advising both governments and the private sector in relation to Energy and Natural Resources, Fraud and Dispute resolution generally. He has represented a number of governments including Brunei, Tanzania, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Egypt, Sudan and Uganda and State corporations from India and China in both arbitration and litigation.
He acts as a commercial arbitrator and as an expert under expert determination provisions. He has trained government officials from Somalia and Ethiopia in capacity building programmes and worked for the World Bank, making a diagnostic review of Lesothan legal systems.
He ran the Denton Hall offices in Beijing (1989 - 98) and Cairo (1998 - 2001) and was a director of the ASX listed gold mining company Artemis Resources between 2006 and 2010. He was Chairman of the ALN law group in Africa between 2006 and 2013. Between 2010 and 2020 he ran the J Miles office in Nairobi and in March 2020 he opened and now runs the J Miles London office.
In the context of arbitration, he has appeared, as a lawyer, before Tribunals of the ICC in London and Paris, Tribunals of LMAA, LCIA, FOSFA and ad hoc in London and Tribunals in Stockholm, Dar es Salaam, Zurich and Geneva. He has appeared as a witness of fact before a Tribunal in Oslo and as an expert witness before a Tribunal in Rotterdam and a court in Rome.
Justice Visram has served in the Kenyan Judiciary for a period spanning over 20 years, where he was a designated Judge of the High Court of Kenya from 1999 and 2009, and was then elevated to the Court of Appeal of Kenya in 2009 during which time the Court of Appeal was the highest court in the land. Upon his retirement in 2019, he was appointed by the then President of Kenya, His Excellency Uhuru Kenyatta, to chair various tribunals constituted to carry out investigations into the conduct of several judges following citations issued by the Judicial Service Commission.
Justice Visram has over 23 years' experience in Mediation and has trained approximately 300 mediators in Kenya, India, UK, Uganda, Tanzania and Democratic Republic of Congo. He was a member of the Judiciary Task Force for Implementation of Court-Annexed Mediation, and between 2015 and 2019, he was the Chairperson of the Mediation Accreditation Committee, a statutory body mandated to admit and provide certification to mediators applying to practice mediation in Kenyan Courts. He is currently the African representative at the International Conciliation and Arbitration Board. He was ranked top 40 arbitrators in Kenya by the Africa Lawyer Magazine.
Upon his retirement from the Judiciary, Justice Visram has been appointed to sit as arbitrator in a number of commercial disputes relating to contracts and insurance law.
Judge Visram has relevant experience in Anti - Money Laundering and Asset Chasing / Tracing, and he has heard and determined a number of landmark cases in this respect.
His experience spans across Kenya, Pakistan and Canada.
Laura is an Advocate of the High Court of Kenya and a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, with over 7 years' experience in dispute resolution, with particular focus on international arbitration matters. She has represented clients and sat as Tribunal Secretary in international arbitrations under the auspices of LCIA, DIFC-LCIA, UNCITRAL ad-hoc arbitrations and FOSFA international rules. She also offers training on international arbitration and other forms of alternative dispute resolution mechanisms. She was recently part of the JMiles Team that trained the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission in Kenya, on different forms of alternative dispute resolution mechanisms. She has also been called upon to speak on multiple aspects surrounding domestic and international arbitration at conferences.
She is involved in advisory work on a wide range of legal matters. Notably, she was part of the expert inter-governmental committee (in conjunction with the Business Registration Service of Kenya) that drafted the Companies (Beneficial Ownership Information) Regulations which were passed into law in 2020. She also conducted, on behalf of the London Stock Exchange and the Ministry of Energy and Petroleum in Kenya, a gap analysis comparing Kenyan legislation against internationally set standards on matters ESG.
She sits on the Law Society of Kenya's Alternative Dispute Resolution Committee (2022 - 2024), and was recently elected to serve as a member of the Law Society of Kenya's taskforce for policy and legal reforms.
Laura currently sits as a member of the Board of Directors of the Nairobi Centre of International Arbitration.
Nikhil specialises in international arbitration, dispute resolution, fraud and asset chasing and has an extensive background in Commercial, Civil and Public Law litigation in Kenya.
He has represented clients in various international arbitration tribunals, the High Court of Kenya and the Court of Appeal of Kenya. Nikhil is fluent in English and Gujarati.
Stephanie is an advocate of the High Court of Kenya. She has a background in corporate and commercial law, real estate, family and civil litigation in Kenya. Prior to joining JMiles & Co, Stephanie worked at E&M Technology where she honed her data protection skills.