1. Spring 1985. The LUISS Faculty of Law had been founded only a couple of years earlier. In the Sala delle Colonne, an interesting study meeting on arbitration was underway. Having just arrived in Rome, from Messina by way of Würzburg, as a researcher at the also newly founded “Tor Vergata,” I was there together with my mentor Nicola Picardi, who introduced me, with his well-known savoir faire, into Rome’s academic world (on that occasion I was introduced, among others, to Natalino Irti and Carmine Punzi, from whom I would learn a great deal over the following years, about law, about academia, and about the profession). The last speaker of the day was Pasquale Chiomenti, by then an elderly lawyer, very well known and indeed something of a legend, especially among the students – and there were many that morning, as there are today – of a faculty proudly new and dedicated to training corporate lawyers with a transnational outlook. Pasquale Chiomenti was in fact the founder of one of the first and most prominent Italian international law firms, and a great arbitrator. During the discussion, a student stood up and asked, quite candidly: “Avvocato Chiomenti, how does one become a good arbitrator?” Chiomenti, with sly candor, replied: “Nothing special: first you become a good, indeed an excellent, lawyer, and then arbitral practice, if it comes, comes on its own.”
