Alan has extensive experience in international trade and investment matters at the multilateral, regional and bilateral levels. He spent twelve years at the WTO Appellate Body, the WTO’s highest tribunal. As a counselor at the Appellate Body Secretariat, he provided advice on procedural and substantive issues to the members of the Appellate Body and was responsible for supervising all case management aspects of an appeal.
He was a co-lead lawyer in the two largest and most complex appeals—Airbus and Boeing—and in the appeal of the first dispute brought to the WTO involving government support policies in the renewable energy sector. In addition, he worked on more than a dozen other appeals covering trade remedies, state-trading enterprises, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, technical regulations and international standards, agricultural subsidies, internal taxes and intellectual property issues. His duties at the WTO also included conducting specialized training activities on the WTO’s rules and dispute settlement procedures for government officials around the globe.
Between 1997 and 2001, Alan was a legal advisor at the General Secretariat of the Andean Community. Prior to that, he served as a commercial secretary at the Colombian Government Trade Bureau.
Alan has engaged in numerous research activities relating to the multilateral trading system and regional trade agreements. He is the co-author of one of the most comprehensive studies of dispute settlement mechanisms in regional trade agreements, and he is the author of an article on the WTO’s rules relating to the energy sector. He also authored several articles on WTO dispute settlement.
