When Rajat Rana moved his investment treaty arbitration practice from Alston & Bird to Selendy Gay Elsberg this summer, it was a reunion of sorts. Rana practiced earlier in his career as an associate in the New York office at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, back before Selendy Gay’s founders left Quinn to form their own one-office trial firm in 2018.

Rana’s latest move continues a long-term trend in the international arbitration world of lawyers leaving big international firms—including Freshfields, Clifford Chance and Sherman & Sterling—to practice in smaller disputes-centered settings. Where many of those prior arbitration specialists left Big Law to form their own boutiques, Rana opted to link up with an established litigation shop. Last week the Litigation Daily caught up with Rana to discuss the move and the overall trend lines in arbitrations involving bilateral investment treaties. The following has been edited for length and clarity.