Etude Mallat (Mallat Law Offices) was founded in 1949 by Wajdi Mallat, former minister and president of the Beirut bar. The firm has an established history in several areas of litigation, notably in private law. Upon its founder’s election in 1993 to the presidency of the newly formed Lebanese Constitutional Council, his son Chibli, then tenured full-time academic at London University, took over as principal.

Litigation, estate and corporate work remain a strength of the firm across all areas of Lebanese law. Chibli Mallat’s academic and scholarly career over the past forty years added a unique niche in international and Middle Eastern law. His expertise as a comparative lawyer and the founder of a new field of Middle Eastern Law is often solicited in major civil and commercial cases in common law courts. His academic tenure across three continents included Harvard and Yale law schools, and he held the first EU Jean Monnet Chair in European law in the Middle East. He retired from academia in 2017. Professor Mallat is the author or editor of some forty books, including Introduction to Middle Eastern Law (Oxford UP 2007), The Normalization of Saudi Law (Oxford UP 2022), and Democracy Redefined (Edinburgh UP 2026).