Claes Zettermarck. Source: https://www.advokatsamfundet.se/Nyhetsarkiv/2011/juni/Claes-Zettermarck-ny-ordforande-i-Advokatsamfundet/
Stockholm University. Photo: Jan Norrman, CC BY 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stockholms_universitet_-_KMB_-_16000300026090.jpg)
Örebro University. Photo: TS Eriksson, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%C3%96rebro_universitet_2013.jpg)
Södertörn District Court. Photo: FrankieF, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:S%C3%B6dert%C3%B6rns_tingsr%C3%A4tt_2022.jpg)
Svea Court of Appeal. Photo: Nord68, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wrangelska_palatset_050701.jpg)
Stockholm University. Photo: Jan Norrman, CC BY 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stockholms_universitet_-_KMB_-_16000300026090.jpg)
Örebro University. Photo: TS Eriksson, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%C3%96rebro_universitet_2013.jpg)
Södertörn District Court. Photo: FrankieF, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:S%C3%B6dert%C3%B6rns_tingsr%C3%A4tt_2022.jpg)
Svea Court of Appeal. Photo: Nord68, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wrangelska_palatset_050701.jpg)
Claes Göran Ragnar Zettermarck was born on 24 August 1947. He grew up in the postwar decades, when the Swedish legal profession was organized around the Swedish Bar Association, an organization founded in 1887 that gained official recognition when the Code of Judicial Procedure took effect in 1948.
His legal education and early career took place within Sweden's university and court system, and his later professional life was centered in Stockholm.
Zettermarck earned a juris kandidat (Bachelor of Laws) degree at the University of Stockholm in 1972. Stockholm University began as Stockholm Högskola, a college founded in 1878 that opened its lectures to the general public, a tradition that continues today. The city council pressed for legal education because of a shortage of lawyers, and the college received degree-awarding powers in 1904. It attained university status in 1960, and its law programme later became Sweden's largest and most applied-for study programme.
After completing his law degree in 1972, Zettermarck worked as a university lecturer at Örebro University from 1972 to 1973. Örebro had become a branch of Uppsala University in 1967, and the institution became an independent college in 1977 through a merger of several local schools. It gained full university status in 1999.
He then moved into the Swedish judiciary. From 1973 to 1975 he served as a tingsnotarie, a junior judicial post, at Södertörn District Court. Swedish district courts are the courts of first instance in ordinary civil and criminal cases. From 1975 until 1977 he worked as a junior judge (hovrättsfiskal) at the Svea Court of Appeal in Stockholm, whose rules of procedure from 1615 are among the earliest Swedish texts to mention advocates.
In 1977 he entered private practice at Palm-Jensen & Roos, first as an associate and later as a partner, until 1983. His practice there concentrated on construction litigation and arbitration, a focus that continued in his later work.
In 1983 he joined White & Case, which was the first foreign law firm to open in Sweden, and helped establish its Stockholm office. He became a partner in 1986 and served as executive partner of the Stockholm office for thirteen years and of the Moscow office for two years. He also sat on the firm's European Coordination Committee and, from 2001 to 2004, on its Global Management Board. The firm's Stockholm practice covered disputes, litigation, arbitration and M&A work, much of which was for private equity clients.
Zettermarck left White & Case on 1 July 2013. The firm's partnership agreement did not allow equity partners to remain after the calendar year in which they turned 65, and he had reached that age in 2012. That year he founded a Stockholm law firm with Claes Lundblad, known as Lundblad & Zettermarck.
He now works mainly as an independent arbitrator and mediator through his own company, Claes Zettermarck Advokataktiebolag, based in Stockholm. He has sat as an arbitrator in Swedish and international disputes under several sets of rules, including those of the Arbitration Institute of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce (SCC). Advokaten magazine reported in 2013 that the SCC institute had built a substantial caseload.
Zettermarck has publicly argued that the rule of law depends on a free and independent legal profession, and that the Swedish Bar should work to protect such a profession. He has stressed that professional ethics rules exist in the client's interest and that trust between lawyers and clients is essential to the profession.
He has also cautioned against regarding every change in professional regulation as harmful, while noting that legal ethics rules differ across Western countries for reasons that justify different systems.
Zettermarck has been a member of Sveriges advokatsamfund, the Swedish Bar Association, since he became an advokat in 1980. The association was founded in 1887 as a voluntary body of academically trained lawyers, with the aim of improving the administration of justice and the standing of the legal profession. Its statutory position was confirmed when the Code of Judicial Procedure entered into force in 1948. Under its charter, its objectives include maintaining high ethical and professional standards, monitoring legal developments, safeguarding members' professional interests and furthering unity among members.
Zettermarck served on the association's board, first as vice chairman from 2009 to 2011 and then as chairman from 2011 to 2013, after the council elected him to the chair in June 2011.
