Arbitration Lunch Match celebrates its five-year anniversary: from its modest beginnings with just 69 local participants in Germany, the event has grown enormously in popularity and literally “gone global” over the past five years; the third week of May 2025 saw the latest edition of Arbitration Lunch Match take place, this time with more than 1,700 participants in 55 cities across the world, from Houston over Accra to Melbourne and from São Paulo over Lisbon to Dubai.
 
In 2019, Lisa Reiser (Baker McKenzie) and Ulrike Gantenberg (Gantenberg Dispute Experts) started organising informal lunch gatherings for female arbitration practitioners in Düsseldorf/Germany. But the idea soon found itself at a crossroads when the COVID pandemic broke out in 2020, and government restrictions made the original concept unfeasible. What could have been a killer criterion became a game changer: instead of meeting as one large group, several small group meetings were organised at various German locations, in the form of (you read that right!) "blind dates". Word spread quickly amongst European colleagues and - with the help of local “ambassadors” – Arbitration Lunch Match expanded to other countries and on almost every continent in the world in only five years of time.

Why this success? Because Arbitration Lunch Match is more than "just lunch". It provides invaluable opportunities to connect with like-minded professionals, share experiences, and advocate for greater inclusion of women in arbitration, ultimately contributing to a stronger, more diverse arbitration community!

Lisa Reiser and Ulrike Gantenberg are celebrating the five-year anniversary with the release of a new publication, the ALMagazine. Cosmopolitan ambassadors share travel tips, restaurant recommendations and hidden gems in their city. The idea: when travelling abroad for an arbitration hearing or meeting, female arbitration practitioners can now rely on arbitration friends from the region and maybe even meet up with fellow participants.
 
Cheers to five years of Arbitration Lunch Match and many more years to come!

Submitted by Arbitration Lunch Match Co-Founder Lisa Reiser, Counsel at Baker McKenzie, Frankfurt