In his 25 years of practice, Robert R. Amsterdam has handled numerous international business disputes and in a variety of emerging markets. With an active trade and subsidy practice, Amsterdam has both defended and prosecuted cases for and against governments and corporations. Canadian Lawyer says of Amsterdam that he is "one of the few lawyers in the world [good at] taking on the state when the state starts acting like a criminal."

Amsterdam has worked in countries as diverse as Hungary, Nigeria, Venezuela, and Guatemala and is deeply experienced with politically sensitive cases. Highly regarded for his strategic innovation and international reach, Amsterdam was retained by the Russian corporation YUKOS-Group MENATEP in 2003 for the defence of former CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky - one of the most high profile cases in modern Russian history.

He co-founded the Toronto-based law firm Amsterdam & Peroff with Dean A. Peroff in 1980 and has represented well-known global corporations including PriceWaterhouseCoopers and the Four Seasons Hotel Group. Amsterdam has delivered speeches at organisations such as the Carnegie Endowment, the Fraser Institute and the International Commission of Jurists and has debriefed parliamentarians and NGO leaders on a variety of political, legal, and business issues. His expert legal commentary is frequently featured in the media, and he has appeared in the American press Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, the UK press the Financial Times, Guardian, German press Die Press, Tagesspiegel, the French press Le Monde amongst others, and was prominently featured in a BBC documentary. Robert has also written many legal and scholarly articles including the recent article which he co-authored and was published in the Fordham Journal - "The duality of state co-operation within international and national criminal cases". Amsterdam also has a successful blog www.robertamsterdam.com.

London's The Lawyer magazine named Robert Amsterdam one of the Hot 100 Attorneys in the UK for 2005.

He is a member of the Canadian, New York and International Bar Associations. He earned his BA from Carleton University in Ottawa and studied law at Queens University in Ontario (LLB).