Nestor Gounaris Adjunct Professor of Law

Phone: 540-458-8500

Email: ngounaris@wlu.edu

Office: Lewis Hall

Areas of Expertise/Classes Taught

Negotiating a Joint Venture in China

Education

BSFS, Georgetown University

JD, University of Virginia

About

Nestor Gounaris teaches a course in Negotiating a Joint Venture in China at the Washington and Lee University School of Law. He is founding partner of China Solutions and has 20 years in-country experience in China, spanning from 1989. During this time, he has advised over 600 clients on matters spanning from large scale construction projects to multimillion dollar cross-border trade disputes.

He started his legal career at the U.S. Justice Department Antitrust Division in Washington, D.C., and then was an associate with O'Melveny & Myers and with Simmons & Simmons in their respective Shanghai offices before establishing China Solution. Gounaris also worked for several years throughout Asia-Pacific as Regional Counsel for a NYSEX-listed chemical company with annual revenue nearing $2 billion.

Gounaris teaches Chinese business law at Georgetown University Law Center, and has taught at the UCLA School of Law and the University of Virginia School of Law, in addition to speaking at Harvard, Columbia, and the University of Washington. Additionally, he serves on the board of the Long Island environmental nonprofit, Group for the East End.

Prior to becoming a lawyer, Gounaris worked on Sino-focused projects at the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Henry Luce Foundation and the Academy for Educational Development. He attended the University of Virginia School of Law and Georgetown's School of Foreign Service, and now serves on Georgetown University Law Center's Asian Advisory Board. He is a member of the New York Bar and speaks Mandarin and modern Greek.