Stephan studied at the universities of Tübingen, Aix-en-Provence (Maîtrise en Droit 1986) and Chicago (LL.M.; Casper Platt Award 1996). He has been a partner at Gleiss Lutz since 2002. He was admitted in New York in 1997 and to various U.S. federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court (2009).
Stephan has been an Advisory Committee Member of the Swiss Arbitration Academy (SAA) since 2008 and Senior Committee Member of the Contemporary Asia Arbitration Journal since 2009. Stephan is also a lecturer at the University of Heidelberg (since 2008). Since 2015 he is lecturer at the Friedrich-Schiller University of Jena and since November 2023 he is honorary professor. In Spring 2010, he was a Visiting Professor at the National Taiwan University College of Law. He is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (FCIArb), a Fellow of the Asian Institute of Alternative Dispute Resolution, and a member of the American Law Institute (ALI) and the SIAC Users Council. Since 2019, he is a Vice President of the CAAI Court of Arbitration. Since 2021, he is a member of the International Arbitration Committee (IAC) at the Korean Commercial Arbitration Board (KCAB, South Korea - renewed 2024 until 2027). Since 2023, he is a member of the International Advisory Board of VIAC. Since July 2024, Stephan is a delegate of the German National Committee to the ICC Commission on Arbitration and ADR.
Stephan speaks German, English, French and Spanish.
