Lisette Aguilar
Partner, Keystone Law; former Senior Director and Associate General Counsel, Sotheby’s
Lisette is an English qualified lawyer specialising in art law, with a background in commercial dispute resolution. During her 12 years as a senior in-house lawyer at Sotheby’s until 2019, Lisette worked on some of the most high-profile cases in the art world, including Coleridge v Sotheby’s [2012] and Thwaytes v Sotheby’s [2015] (successfully defending both). Her professional experience within the heart of the art world has given her extensive knowledge of the wide range of legal issues which can arise, and an understanding of the importance of resolving these for the parties, having handled questions of authenticity and attribution, provenance and ownership, restitution and cultural property (among others) on a daily basis. In 2015 her team won the Legal 500 In-House Litigation Team of the Year Award.
Based on her specialist experience Lisette has been a guest lecturer on the Art Business and Law LLM postgraduate programme at Queen Mary University of London and a speaker at the Masterpiece Art Fair in London. She is a member of PAIAM (Professional Advisors to the International Art Market).
Prior to working at Sotheby’s and now Keystone Law as an art lawyer, Lisette worked for six years at the renowned City law firm Slaughter and May where she first gained experience of high value commercial arbitrations between international parties, putting her fluent French to good use in one multi-million pound arbitration in particular. She has also participated in a number of art law mediations.
Lisette read French and German at Magdalen College, University of Oxford (B.A., M.A. Modern Languages, Oxon) and studied law at the College of Law in London, achieving a distinction at postgraduate level.
Jurisdiction: U.K.