Carsten is a founding member and senior partner of JSS Barristers, the largest civil litigation boutique law firm in Western Canada. His practice emphasizes corporate and commercial litigation, arbitration, class actions, energy litigation, shareholder and partnership disputes, and professional negligence.
Carsten has represented governments, airlines, firms, and individuals, and he acts in defence of professional negligence claims. He has extensive trial and appellate experience and is frequently retained by other law firms in conflict matters.
Carsten has significant arbitration and hearing‑panel experience, both as counsel and as neutral. He served as lead counsel in a complex arbitration dealing with a price adjustment for environmental costs on the sale of a package of oil and gas assets, with an asserted claim value exceeding $800 million. Carsten is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators and serves as Chair of its Professional Conduct Committee.
During a leave of absence from JSS Barristers from 1998 to 2000, Carsten served as Senior Legal Officer at the United Nations Compensation Commission in Geneva, Switzerland, dealing with claims arising from the first Persian Gulf War, including Kuwait’s oil loss claim related to well fires started by departing Iraqi forces.
Carsten is a past bencher of the Law Society of Alberta and served a one‑year term as President of the Law Society beginning in February 2013. He is currently Alberta’s representative to the Federation of Law Societies of Canada and serves as Chair of its Standing Committee on the Model Code, which sets the national code of conduct for lawyers in Canada.
He is a past board member of ALIEX, the insurance reciprocal providing professional liability insurance to Alberta lawyers, and a former Vice‑President of the Alberta Civil Trial Lawyers Association. Carsten was appointed King’s Counsel in 2006.
