Michelle Lindholm joined Quinn Emanuel’s Zurich office as an associate in 2024. Her main areas of practice are commercial litigation and arbitration, debt enforcement, insolvency and contract law. She regularly acts as counsel in complex domestic and international cases in a variety of industries and represents parties before various tribunals, including the Swiss Federal Supreme Court.
Before joining QE, Michelle worked for over five years in two first tier litigation and arbitration practice groups of other Swiss commercial law firms. Additionally, she clerked for over two years at a district court in the Canton of Zurich, where her responsibilities included drafting decisions, procedural orders, protocols, supervising, and organizing the proceedings.
Prior to her career as a lawyer, Michelle was a teaching and research assistant to law professors Prof. Dr Mark Pieth and Prof. Dr Ingeborg Schwenzer, LL.M., where she worked on publications about the Swiss Code of Criminal Procedure, Swiss criminal law and international sales law. She also supported Prof. Pieth in the preparation of legal opinions, the supervision of seminar papers and acted as student supervisor for the Willem C. Vis Moot Team of the University of Basel. Furthermore, she gave tutorials on the general part of the Swiss Code of Obligations under the supervision of Prof. Dr Ingeborg Schwenzer, LL.M. and Prof. Dr Corinne Widmer Lüchinger.
Michelle graduated from the University of Basel (Bachelor of Law in 2012 "magna cum laude" with the second-best result and Master of Law in 2013 "magna cum laude"). She also holds a post-graduate degree from the University of Cambridge (Master of Law, LL.M.) and a Certificate of Advanced Studies (CAS) in Arbitration and an Arbitration Practitioner (ArbP).
She is a member of several law associations, including the International Association of Young Lawyers (AIJA), for which she joined the Executive Committee from 2020-2024. In 2024, Michelle was appointed as Vice President of AIJA’s Litigation Commission. Michelle is a frequent writer and speaker about Swiss civil procedural law, arbitration and Swiss contract law.
- University of Neuchâtel and Lucerne
(CAS in Arbitration, Arbitration Practitioner, 2017) - University of Basel
(Bachelor of Law, BLaw, magna cum laude, 2012)
(Master of Law, MLaw, magna cum laude, 2014) - University of Cambridge
(LL.M., 2014)
- Swiss Attorney at Law registered in the Canton of Zurich (admitted to all courts of Switzerland)
- German
- English
- French
- Law Clerk
- District Court of Meilen, 2015-2018
- Panelist, “Preparing and defending claims and counterclaims to persuade a tribunal - with a focus on multi-party cases ”, AIJA 3rd Annual Litigation Conference, London, 17-19 October 2024
- Orell Füssli Repetitorium Zivilprozessrecht, Lindholm, M., Zurich, 2024
- Panelist, "Leveraging interim relief, disclosure orders and other measures to recover assets", AIJA Seminar Challenges in global asset recovery and enforcement of judgments, Curaçao, 11-13 April 2024
- Panelist, "How to seize the assets - preliminary measures and asset freezing", AIJA 2nd Annual Litigation Conference, Munich, 22–24 June 2023
- Commentary on the Swiss Code of Obligations, Orell Füssli Commentary, 4th edn., Commentary on arts. 407-411 and 466-471, Lindholm, M., Zurich, 2023
- The View from Europe: What’s New in European Arbitration?, Lindholm, M., Beisteiner, L., Edworthy, C., Horne, L., Ebert, B.P., Rohner, T., Wilske, S., Dispute Resolution Journal Volume 75, Issue 3, 2020, pp. 167-187
- Die Teilklage in der bundesgerichtlichen Rechtsprechung, Rusch, L., Lindholm, M., Chevalley, C.A., Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Zivilprozess- und Zwangsvollstreckungsrecht (ZZZ), 2021, Heft 56, pp. 727-736
- Panelist, "How to lead your party into and through a construction dispute", AIJA Construction Dispute Seminar, Vienna, 14 – 16 Ocotber 2021
- Panelist, "Diversity in courts and arbitral tribunals ", AIJA 58th International Young Lawyers' Virtual Congress, 24-28 August 2020
- Die Anwendung von Rechtsnormen der ZPO auf das Schlichtungsverfahren, Die Anwendbarkeit von Rechtsnormen ausserhalb des 1. Titels unter dem 2. Teil der besonderen Bestimmungen der ZPO (Art. 197 bis 212 ZPO) auf das Schlichtungsverfahren – Eine Darstellung der Doktrinen und Rechtsprechung mit kritischen Anmerkungen, Seiler, M., Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Zivilprozess- und Zwangsvollstreckungsrecht (ZZZ), 2014/2015, Heft 35, pp. 174-182