Paul van den Hoek was a senior partner at Dutch law firm Stibbe until 2009.

During his law practice of 45 years, he mainly handled mergers and acquisitions, corporate restructuring, conflict resolution in companies, and mediation assignments.

He also served as a non-executive director at both larger and smaller companies, notably as non-executive chair at Corporate Express, Ballast Nedam, ASM International, Robeco Groep, Wavin, AON Group Nederland and Financieele Dagblad.

He was a professor of corporate law at Amsterdam Free University and dean of the Netherlands Bar Association.