March 5, 2019

Steven Hill was appointed as the Legal Adviser and Director of the Office of Legal Affairs at NATO Headquarters in Brussels in February 2014. In this role, Mr. Hill is Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s chief legal adviser. He leads the multinational legal team in the Office of Legal Affairs, which provides timely legal advice on policy issues, develops consensus solutions for compliance with multinational legal requirements, and promotes and defends the Organization’s legal interests in numerous internal and external venues.  He also represents NATO in external legal bodies such as the Council of Europe’s Committee of Legal Advisers and conducts regular engagements with NATO Allies, Partners, and other international organizations as well as the general public.

Prior to joining NATO, Mr. Hill served as Counselor for Legal Affairs at the United States Mission to the United Nations, where he participated in multinational negotiations on the rule of law, sanctions, counter-terrorism, peacekeeping, and the protection of civilians. He was also a member of the Management Committee for the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, the Principal Donors Group for the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, and the U.S. observer delegation to the Assembly of States Parties of the International Criminal Court.

Prior to his work in New York, he led the legal unit at the International Civilian Office / European Union Special Representative in Kosovo and was a Visiting Professor of Law at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center in China. Mr. Hill began his legal career in the Office of the Legal Adviser (L) at the U.S. Department of State. In a series of assignments, he focused on diplomatic property law, economic sanctions, international humanitarian law, and human rights law. He represented the U.S. in numerous United Nations human rights-related committees and treaty bodies as well as before the International Court of Justice and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. From 2004 to 2005 and again in 2007, he served as a legal adviser at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

Mr. Hill graduated from Yale Law School and Harvard College and is a member of the New York bar.