President: Margarete von Galen

Margarete von Galen has been practicing as a lawyer in Berlin since 1983 and as a specialist lawyer in criminal law since 1998. Alongside with her activities as a criminal defence lawyer she advises on compliance issues and acts as External Ombudsperson for several companies. She has published essays and decision notes as well as having contributed to publications in the field of criminal law. From 2004-2009, she was President of the Berlin Bar. She has been a judge at the Constitutional Court of the State of Berlin since 2014. In 2008, she joined the Criminal Law Committee of the CCBE and, from 2015-2017, she was a member of the German CCBE Delegation.

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First Vice-President: James MacGuill

James MacGuill, Managing Partner at MacGuill and Company, was admitted to the role of solicitor in 1986 and was appointed a Notary Public in 1996. He has been in private practice ever since as a litigator with an emphasis on public law, especially criminal law. He has been actively involved in The Law Society of Ireland, has chaired many of its committees and served as President of the Law Society in 2007-2008. He joined the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe in 2008, where he was Head of the Irish Delegation and, later, Chair of its Criminal Law Committee until January 2019.

Second Vice-President: Panagiotis Perakis

After his studies in Greece (Athens Law University) and France (University of Montpellier, DEA in computer law), Panagiotis Perakis started his career as a lawyer providing legal services in both advisory and judicial proceedings. Over the years, he became an expert in Greek Corporate Law and continued practicing other areas of law gaining extensive experience in multiple kinds of cases, as well as dispute resolution procedures. At the same time, he has served as an independent legal expert of the EU Commission for years, on the resolving and regulation of new legal issues arising by the changing Information and Telecommunications technologies. Since 2011, he has been an elected member of the Executive Board of the Athens Bar. Mr. Perakis was the Chair of the CCBE Access to Justice Committee since February 2015, the Head of the Greek Delegation in 2019, and elected as CCBE Third Vice-President in 2020.

Third Vice-President: Pierre-Dominique Schupp

Mr. Pierre-Dominique Schupp is a permanent member of the Swiss delegation to the CCBE since 2016. He could demonstrate its competences in the international working group on the insurances.

Due to its particular high language skills, Pierre-Dominique can easily communicate in French, German, English, Spanish and Portuguese.