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Law Firm ILN-telligence Podcast | Sven Burchartz | Kalus Kenny Intelex

Sven Burchartz is a partner with Kalus Kenny Intelex, a progressive, commercially oriented firm, specializing in property, corporate and commercial, and dispute resolution in Australia and a member of the International Lawyers Network. In this episode, he and Lindsay discuss the collaborative method by which he brought his firm back to the office post-pandemic, how he feels AI will (and won’t) impact the legal industry, and why he still loves being a lawyer.

You can listen to the podcast here, or we’ve provided a transcript of the highlights below.

Lindsay: Hello and welcome to the Law Firm ILN-telligence Podcast. I am your host, Lindsay Griffiths, Executive Director of the International Lawyers Network. And our guest this week is a returning guest, Sven Burchartz, with Kalus Kenny Intelex in Melbourne, Australia. Sven, welcome back. It’s great to have you here. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself, and your firm, and your practice?

Sven: Lindsay, great to be back. We’re a firm of fifty people in Melbourne, Australia. We’re fortunate enough to be the ILN firm for Australia, and I’ve been really happy with the relationships we’ve made with everyone around the world. We’ve managed to think, to visit, and retain lawyers in every major continent, which is terrific. It fits our client base, which is avowed with private clients who are doing deals in various jurisdictions as well as dealing with overseas inward work. So, our work ranges from property, property in the developer space, funding finance, structured finance, and the building and construction space across to the commercial practice, which has a very interesting international flavor. We’ve got a couple of clients based out of Europe that we effectively do their in-house teamwork for, on all of their investments in their specific industry, but do a normal M&A, buy and sell transaction agreements.

We also have a dedicated estates and trusts team to deal with our clients’ asset and estate management, which is growing, and has some terrific young lawyers in it. We’ve also got a family law team. Unfortunately, family law conflicts are a fact of life, so we do a lot of that work primarily on the property side of things. Kids are an inevitable part of that, but primarily we help with their structuring and the major transactions in that. And then we have our disputes team, which has a sub-team, which is our employment law team. But our disputes team is by far the largest in the firm, headcount wise. And unfortunately, again, where there’s more than one person, there’s always going to be a dispute that’s potentially there, so we handle that. So out of the fifty people, there are thirty lawyers. My role is I deal with the economic aspects of the practice as well as some of the people stuff, but we’ve got various other partners who focus on various other administrative sides.

But I’m fortunate in advertive commerce to have to do with the economic parts of the practice, which I’m happy to say are going well. We’ve been growing well over the last three or four years. As we said in the last podcast. We grew through the COVID lockdowns, notwithstanding that we were almost subject to a police state set of conditions imposed by our government here, but we managed to go through that. I will say there is a bit of post lockdown or post COVID PTSD around, still. People are very weary. So, we’re having to manage that very carefully and be very, very aware of people’s energy levels. But yes, that’s us for the moment.

Lindsay: Yes, speaking of that, I find that, too. And one of the things I’ve talked to people a lot about recently is this push and pull about working from home versus being in the office, and the difficulties that we find, especially with some of the younger lawyers and the ability to train younger lawyers, who, you really want them to be in the office because there is something missing when you’re not able to just drop by, and see how they’re managing their cases, and have those conversations that you might just bring them into the office to be there for a client conversation, those types of things. So how do you manage that when there is really this PTSD from dealing with COVID, but you want to try and bring back that pre-pandemic ability to be together and be in the office?

Sven: We had great success in terms of people coming back into the office. We are now back in the office. If you want to be full-time, you’re full-time, but everyone is in four days. And we didn’t have any major issues about having that happen. And one of the main drivers was to get the work socialization going, because we have a lot of younger lawyers, and they absolutely need to have that ability to drop by an office or sit around together and workshop a problem. And you had to do it whilst you were locked away. But it’s certainly far from, in my view, in our view, the preferred best approach to what is a collaborative service. You need to have people thinking together, and the quickest way to do that is to be able to talk in person. So, we managed the transition carefully, and talked to our staff, and said, “Look, this is what we want to see, but take it at your own time.”

So, we didn’t issue an edict and said, “Right, you’re back in, in four days and that’s it.” It started with two and said, “Let’s build it up.” And we used language, which is acceptable, and was understood, and said, “Look, we’d like to see you more in the office than less in the office.” So, they started to build the pendulum that way. People got comfortable. And then it perpetuated itself. People enjoyed the experience. And I remember my own experience was when I came back, I had to adjust. Even, and I thought, “Yep, no problem. It’s going to be great. I’ll be back in the office.” But my routines changed so far fundamentally again. And so, I know that I had almost, not an anxiety, but a pensiveness about being back in the flow of the office. So, I figured, “Given that I figure I’ve got a reasonable level of resilience, how much our people be feeling?”

So, we took it nice and easy, but ultimately people just didn’t filter in. We then worked alternate days with teams, so we had whole teams in, whole teams out. And our current practice is that there’ll be a team not in the office each day of the week so that we have mainly people in, but then people say, “Well, look, I want to come in.” So, it really is a case of, “Manage yourself.” But it took, to be honest, it took probably 12 months of a gentle transition.

We know that, and we saw other law firms and other professional service firms do what we thought to be crazy stuff, and just issue edicts, and probably treat them the way they did at the start of the pandemic, which said, “Right, we’re going to slash all your salaries, and we’re going to pull back to 60%.” And a lot of that arm-waving panic stations routine, which unsettled so many people, whereas we went the opposite way and said, “No one’s losing their job. If we need to put money in, we’ll put money in.” Thankfully, we never did. But you have to teach people and treat people with respect, and bring them along, and when they understand, and when you are open with them as to why you think this is a good idea, unless it’s a really bad idea, they recognize that it’s a good idea. So, we’ve done all right. It’s thankfully behind us now.

Lindsay: Yes, no, that offers a lot of comfort and that does help. So, what would you say then is your biggest challenge at the moment, and how are you working to deal with it?

Sven: Biggest challenge? Oh, look, I suppose it’s dealing with the lack of economic certainty that that’s been created in the US. I’m sure it’s the same as it is here. Your Fed has cranked interest rates through the roof. It’s caught a lot of people unawares. And same here, our Reserve Bank is your Fed. They don’t have much in their back pockets. So, what they tend to do is bludgeon the economy because they’ve got nothing else. And that is impacting the confidence of our clients, their industries, and I also think the confidence of our staff because they’re wondering what’s going on.

That said, we haven’t noticed any drop-off in work, and we certainly haven’t noticed any change in that type of work. So unfortunately, I’m old enough to remember the late ’80s, early ’90s recession, and every GFC, and other event that’s happened since. And it’s nowhere near those sorts of things. I think the economy has learned how to, and particularly governments and institutions have learned how to respond to these things without ripping them up. So, banks are being a bit more responsible, governments are being far more responsible, but it is quite a challenge for people to understand that two years ago everything was rosy, and money was cheap, and all of a sudden the breaks of being yanked on. So that’s pretty much the only challenge that we have. Otherwise, the firms move along very nicely. We’ve got a great team. Our clients are happy and healthy.

As I was saying earlier, we don’t see, and a lot of my work is dispute work, and when it gets really bad, the disputes work becomes quite defensive, whereas I haven’t seen that yet. That said, law is always the first to see the green shoots and the last to see the brown grass. So, we, as an industry, tend to lag conditions, but then see the early signs of improvement. So that’s pretty much it. Otherwise, we’re all happy, and healthy, and raring to go.

Lindsay: That’s great.

Sven: Again, it’s probably, as I said earlier, it’s, I think managing and understanding people’s energy levels, and being very responsive to the early signs of fatigue, making sure that the work is allocated properly, supervised properly, because the greatest challenge for a young lawyer is to get the supervising lawyer to actually check the work in a way that’s timely. Client pressures are up there, turnarounds fast. We’ve all learned to live with a scourge of email, and the fact that everything’s required immediately, and some deals don’t respect the clock, in fact, the big deals don’t respect clock, peoples’ lives. So that’s a little bit more of an awareness thing.

And to be honest, it’s probably one of the greatest positives out of the whole COVID experience is that we’ve had to and had to accept that we must be very responsive to how our people feel, and also support them and say, “Listen, you’re a bit stronger than that.” If somebody’s feeling a little bit down, you give them support and you let them understand how they can manage it. So, building resilience rather than letting the snowflake melt, say, “Okay, let’s just build something around you that supports you to understand that life’s not really that easy.” And yes, it’s unfortunately difficult sometimes not to fall into a paternalistic pattern, particularly with younger lawyers. So, you’ve got to be a little bit, “Okay, this is hard, but that’s part of becoming a more senior practitioner, so let’s work out how we do it.”

Lindsay: That’s true. Yes. I found that as I become older, too, you can very easily fall into that, that wanting to pat people on the head a little bit and take care of them. And it really, as you say, it is a fine line between doing that and taking care of people, but also helping them to grow up within the firm and moving towards the idea that, “Unfortunately, just because you do the right thing, good things aren’t necessarily going to happen to and for you, and you’re going to just have to sometimes buck up, and do the hard stuff that’s around you, and get through it.” And that’s just the way life is and works.

Sven: It is, indeed.

Lindsay: Yes. And as you said, you’ve been through the GFC and other financial crisis, and sometimes that’s just the way the market is. It’s going to have its ups and its downs, and you have to prepare for it, and move through it. And just because things are rosy this year doesn’t mean that’s going to be true next year, and that’s fine and normal.

Sven: Look, when we got locked down, one of the first things we said to our staff was, “Look, again, unfortunately the more senior people in the firm, it’s not their first rodeo. And so, we know how to deal with it, and we know how to batten down. And generally, it’s a two- or three-year cycle from the time that it gets terrible to the time that it stops being terrible. And you just have to make sure that you’re strong enough to get through it.” Yes, it’s an unfortunate effect of being older now.

Lindsay: Yes, it’s true. You do get more resilient, but sometimes you’re a little tired of being resilient, too.

Sven: Yes, true. That is true. Leadership takes energy.

Lindsay: Yes. But yes, you’ve got to have it. What would you say is the biggest area related to your practice or the practice of law that you’re curious about?

Sven: That I’m curious about or that the firm’s curious about?

Lindsay: No, that you’re curious about?

Sven: That’s a hard one. One of my clients does a lot of work in the cryptocurrency space. In fact, they transact. They transact the majority of their value shifts as between them and their customers between, using crypto. So, they don’t use traditional fee at all. And talking to them, they use crypto, particularly Bitcoin, as a currency. And understanding that is a challenge, because your traditional view of crypto is said to be an asset class and people speculate on it. Whereas this client in particular is trying to push their space, and it’s a big space, into saying, “Look, you must be able to use crypto to buy and sell things and to give value for services.” And they do it in a very transparent way. So, it’s not some sort of pre-regulated gray market. It’s all, they declare it, they pay the taxes, do everything they need to do.

But I think that’s an example of technology, and crypto not being a technology, but it’s based on a technology that does away with traditional fear. So, I find that fascinating. And I watched a podcast the other day where he was on a panel, and it was quite novel, even for the panelists to hear that he wants to turn it into money, effectively, money. Will you ever be able to buy a loaf of bread with a percentage of bitcoin? Yes, not soon, but the other transactions you can.

And then there’s the whole Chat GPT thing, which I find frankly hilarious. It is the funniest thing I’ve ever experienced. And people say, “It’s terribly frightening.” And it can be and certainly will be. AI is fascinating and also concerning because even the originators of AI are now worried about what it can do. It’s crazy. It’s like a scientist comes up with this great concept and then loses sleep about what might happen with it, like, “Seriously?” But ChatGPT had a lot of lawyers here running for the hills, and go, “Oh, it’s terrible. Life is over.” And all I see there, and I talk to our staff about it because it’s something that they’re interested in. And I say, “Look, ChatGPT does nothing more than aggregate and spew out information that it’s grabbed from somewhere and make it sound half plausible.”

And it’s funny, I saw, saw these reports of these lawyers in the US who put together a paper and quoted non-existent authorities. It was just the funniest thing. And I thought, “How are you going to talk your way of this, you idiots?” But I always come back to, “What do our clients want from us?” And as lawyers, they want judgment, they want experience, and they want guidance. And artificial intelligence will give you an outcome or a product, but it will not give you a considered answer.

And I said, “So we must not be uncomfortable. We can fully automate a lot of stuff, like forms, and other bits and bobs, aggregating stuff, that’s fine. But until human beings absolutely trust machines, and they never will. People come to us for our judgment. So that when you say to a client, ‘Look, I’ve looked at all your options. This is the best way to go.’ And that’s informed through life experience, mistakes. Judgment isn’t just the reformulation of raw data, it brings intuition, experience, and all that sort of stuff.”

So that is the thing that I probably find most curious. The crypto thing is just fascinating. I watch my client do it and say, “Hey, mate, you’re a real trailblazer, here.” But the whole AI and ChatGPT makes me laugh and then be concerned at the same time. But it’s certainly not going to make us irrelevant. In fact, more so, I think what will happen is in time, some aspects of legal services will be more automated and perhaps AI driven, but the important stuff which matters to people will never be a machine. Some people may go, “Look, I’ll go there, that’s fine.” And my view is, “Look, you’re on your own, then. And in fact, look, come back to me when it goes wrong, and I’ll help you fix it.”

Lindsay: Yes. For a very big fee.

Sven: Yes, exactly right. And I always say, “Whilst I’m not cheap, it’s actually cheap insurance, and I generally get more right than wrong.” So that’s my response. That’s a bit rambling, but there you go.

Lindsay: No, and I totally agree with you. I was talking about it earlier with somebody today, and I think it’s very interesting what you said, and I fully agree with you. I think it will automate the things that lawyers don’t need to be spending their time on, and it will elevate the things that lawyers are really important for, which is the advisory piece. The thing that I wonder about, and this is what I raised with somebody earlier today, is the training piece. Because as you say, what clients will come to lawyers for is that experience, but if the way you’re gaining that experience is through the things that are being automated by AI, how will we get the younger lawyers to the point where they’re gaining that experience? So that’s the piece I’m curious about, how are we going to get those younger lawyers to get the experience that you have already?

Sven: That’s the thing. I remember back when I was a young litigation lawyer, and the crap work was the debt collection, and it was the low-end stuff, and we had a couple of institutional clients, and we were collecting card debts, and all that sort of stuff. And it was not great work, wrong reflection, but it taught me all about court process, and dispute dynamics, and settlement. So, there is that issue about that the basic hack, early work, I don’t know, if it’s debt collection, or if it’s doing basic transactions for conveyancing, or straightforward leases, any of those very routine, repetitive types of jobs, they do teach you, because you know about the law.

So, I think what will have to happen is that our teaching methods and our teaching points will have to adapt, and we’ll have to say, “Look, okay, the machine’s going to do it up to this point. But at that point, a judgment’s got to be exercised.” And I think clients will want that. They’ll take an automation point, and they’ll say, “Okay, at this point I want a lawyer, I want a human being to exercise some judgment.” And I think it’ll just mean that we teach our younger lawyers differently if automation starts to become a great feature, which in time it will.

Lindsay: Yes, no, I agree. That makes sense. Switching gears a little bit, tell us something interesting about yourself that most people don’t know.

Sven: Gee, I actually looked at this question, I thought, “Now, what can I answer here?” As far as the people that know me, and my circle, and my colleagues, but if I can answer it in the context of the ILN members, they won’t. Also, I have raced cars for 25 years.

Lindsay: Wow.

Sven: Yes, a long time and lots of competitions, GT cars, I’ve raced Mustangs, but mainly my vice is Porsche race cars. And I’ve done that for a long, long time. And I also am a part owner of a race team. So, in the US you have NASCAR, and here we have Supercars, which is effectively a lot like NASCAR. So I’m a reasonably significant owner of a Supercar team here, which employ, which I think we’ve got 60, 70 people, four drivers, four cars. So, it’s a very big team. It’s called Tickford Racing.

And I got involved in that because I helped the then owners acquire it from Prodrive in the UK, and I sat on their advisory board. And then one day, one of the owners says to me, “Look, now, you’re good at this. You’ve got something to add. Would you like to become a part owner?” And I should have taken the question home to my wife, but I was a little bit fast and said, “Yeah, sure, that sounds like a great idea.” And then came home and said, “Cille, look, I’ve done this thing.” Anyway, it worked out well. It’s a very successful team. But she’s used to it because I also have a habit of buying cars and then telling her. But thankfully the cars that I buy tend to be good investments which I can drive around, but so perhaps that’s something the membership doesn’t know, that I race cars and I’ve got part ownership in a very big racing team.

Lindsay: That’s so fun. I love that. I’m going to have to tell my dad. He’s really going to love that too.

Sven: Yes, no, it’s great fun. And to be honest, it’s also, having done it for so long, and at one point I actually owned a race series, I ran it for Porsche back in the late 2000s.

Lindsay: Oh, cool.

Sven: Yes. Well, again, another bright idea with a man, mate of mine and I, probably a few too many beers in and said, “Hey, John, do you reckon we should do this with Porsche?” So, we rang them up and they agreed. So, for three years we ran that. But it’s actually, I do have a lot of contact within Motorsport. So, it actually was the genesis of our sports law practice, which is a very niche practice that I and the two other lawyers in the firm pursue. So, we do a lot in Motorsport, but we do a lot of sponsorship and talent management stuff. And just before this call, I was working on a deal where a client of ours is sponsoring an English Premier League team, and this is the fourth one that we’ve done. So, we get that sort of work about, but it’s also, it all came from Motorsport because Motorsport is sports, it’s got all the elements of talent, sponsorship, and all that sort of stuff. So, I do get a lot of work from being involved, which is nice.

Lindsay: That’s very cool. Very nice. Awesome. Who has been your biggest mentor over your career?

Sven: In my early career, a fellow by the name of Michael Thornton. He’s passed away now, unfortunately. But he gave me my first big break in the law firm that I then became a partner of for 23 years. And what he taught me was to look for the things in other practitioners that you can learn from, and adapt, and make yours for your own style. And he was a very grown-up guy, and he recognized some of his partners as people who perhaps aren’t setting the same, shining examples. So, he would quite diplomatically say, “Look, you know what they’re doing? You might want to not do that.” But what he taught me most was when I was a young lawyer, gee, how old was I, 24, 25, was putting trust in capable people and good people. So, when I joined him, he was running a practice which involved a lot of trial work, a huge amount of trial work. We were acting for an insurer in relation to injury claims that were on the fraudulent end of the spectrum. So we were a specialist firm that deal with insurance fraud.

And here I was as a 25-year-old, and he said to me, “I’ve been doing these for ages. Here, have my file load in this.” And I thought, “That’s fantastic.” So, I immediately inherited sixty-five fraud cases, all of which were running. The client’s policy was never to settle. So, for three years we were doing this work, and I ran, I don’t know, two or three years, I ran sixty trials, sixty-five jury trials. And now, what that taught me and how he mentored, he was always there with the safety net if I was wobbling and falling over. And what I didn’t know is he was in constant contact with the claims managers, letting them know that he was around, but letting me go, and not make mistakes, but giving me the freedom to do the work.

And they were long, long days as a young lawyer, but they made me understand how to manage workloads, how to manage clients, how to manage courts, judges, opponents, witnesses. Back in the day when we didn’t have mobile phones, I used to walk around with a big bag of coins and call all my witnesses from a payphone in the court. It was crazy stuff. But it was wonderful because what it taught me is to give people space and latitude to develop as themselves, as their lawyers, trust them. And if they’re good, they will know what their limitations are. So, Michael was, I think, singularly the biggest influence in shaping the way that I practice law and work with my staff.

Lindsay: Wow, that’s really incredible. He sounds like a wonderful lawyer and a wonderful person.

Sven: Yes, he had the best laugh. Did you ever watch, what was it, there’s a cartoon character called Muttley, and-

Lindsay: Yes.

Sven: … in the US. Yes, he sniggered like Muttley, this giggle, this absolutely childish giggle, and he found the weirdest shit funny. And sorry, I shouldn’t swear, I suppose, but-

Lindsay: That’s fine.

Sven: I’ve got a bit of an off the wall sense of humor, so I was always making him laugh, which was great.

Lindsay: That’s great.

Sven: Because he’s a wonderful man and I miss him.

Lindsay: I bet. I bet. He sounds wonderful. So along those lines, then, what is one of the most important lessons you’ve learned along your career?

Sven: Never forget humanity, the human part of your clients’ experiences. Doesn’t matter how hard-nosed, if it’s the big M&A deal, try and understand the people in the deal, and what’s motivating them, what they need, what they’re looking for, what their motivations are, and understanding that transactions and disputes involve people and emotions, and inevitably lawyers get tangled up in that. And therefore, you need to manage your own emotions. Even when you feel like being a cheer squad for your client, you shouldn’t be. You should be an advocate and an advisor. So, the thing that you have to bring to it is emotional intelligence, empathy, sometimes sympathy, but understanding everyone for what they want and recognizing that life’s not a battle. It’s actually about generating some decent outcomes, even in the most torrid piece of litigation.

Your job ethically, I’m no deep reader, but Mahatma Gandhi was a lawyer. And I remember reading a book, probably at high school, studying it, but he said, “A lawyer’s primary ethical obligation is to settle disputes. It’s not to fight them.” And so, bringing that into the commercial space, it’s to get an outcome that works for everyone, but ultimately understanding that’s not PSYOPs, it’s understanding people and then saying, “Okay, how can I tailor what I do professionally and non-professionally?”

Lindsay: Yes, very true. Just wrapping up, then, what is something that you’re enjoying at the moment, not to do with work or anything on this podcast?

Sven: Oh, well, we’ve just finished a two-year project building a house down on the coast. And we’re in it, which is fun. We’re down here for three weeks with my wife, Cille, and the two boys. So just being here, after having not had the house, and then looking at my rolling five-year plan, and saying, “Okay.” Because five years ago I said, “Look, I’ve got this five-year plan that means that I’ll be doing less work.” “Yep, okay.” So, I’ve reset that, and I’ve started another five-year plan. But I’m enjoying it. It’s beautiful sea air. The kids love it. They’ve got their bicycles down here. And so, I enjoy coming back down and leaving the city behind, but still working, which is good.

Lindsay: Always working.

Sven: Yes. Look, to be honest, it’s part of my fabric. I think I’m not a person who defines themselves by what I do, certainly. And I don’t say, “I am a lawyer.” No, “I’m a person, I practice the law.” But yes, it’s never far away, particularly when you’re an owner of the business, you’ve got lots going on.

But I can say this in closing, I absolutely love being a lawyer. I’ve never regretted doing what I do and fixing things up, being it a deal or a dispute, I still love being a lawyer. Every client that brings me something I learn from, I’m curious, “How the hell did you get into that? And tell me about your business.” So, you learn so much about what actually happens in the world by understanding your clients, and what they do, and how they make money, or how they lose money. So, unfortunately, just not outside the law, but I still love being a lawyer.

Lindsay: I love that. That’s great. Well, thank you so much again for joining us. I really, excuse me, enjoyed our conversation. And thanks so much to all of our listeners. Please take a moment to rate, review, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. And we’ll be back next week with our next guest. Thank you so much.

Sven: Thanks, Lindsay.

Law Firm ILN-telligence Podcast | Andreas Bauer | BRAUNEIS

Andreas Bauer is a partner with BRAUNEIS, the ILN’s member firm in Vienna, Austria. In this episode, he and Lindsay discuss the war on talent, the ever-increasing pace of technology and its impact on both the practice of law and how young lawyers are trained, and the continuing impact of the pandemic on the legal industry.

You can listen to the podcast here, or we’ve provided a transcript of the highlights below.

Lindsay: Hello and welcome to the Law Firm Intelligence Podcast. I’m your Host, Lindsey Griffiths, Executive Director of the International Lawyers Network. Our guest this week is Andreas Bauer with Brauneis in Vienna, Austria. Andreas, welcome. We’re really glad to have you this week. Thank you for joining us.

Andreas: Thanks for the invitation.

Lindsay: Why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself and the firm and your practice?

Andreas: Okay. I’m a Lawyer. I’m 58 years of age. I’m working in Vienna, Austria in one of the biggest medium-sized law firms of Vienna. We are around fifty people, seven partners, about another seven to ten lawyers, the rest of our staff. We are a law firm that’s concentrating on many parts of the Austrian economy, so we are pretty broad situated. I myself, I am working for a few trusts. On the one hand I have a few industry clients, a few private clients, so that’s all more or less the same with all of us. We have partners with specialties like IP, and we have a partner that is fluent in Bulgarian. We are a classical center of Europe law firm, and we like that very much. It’s a nice way to do this business, not too big, not too small. We can handle nearly everything from our size and our capacity. But we are not a big law firm.

I don’t have to report to any business manager on how many hours I have built this week or so. And to be honest, I’m very glad that I don’t have such a manager. That’s about us. We are very well integrated in the International Lawyers Network, which gives us much contact, especially to our neighboring countries, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Switzerland, Germany. We are definitely doing 20% of our work is cross border, so that’s an important part for our business.

Lindsay: Yes. I would imagine being so well situated in Europe that it would be necessary to have ties to an international organization, because you would necessarily need best friends to cross borders.

Andreas: Yes. Austria is pretty small. We are nine million people, so lots of business is going abroad across some borders somewhere. But we have been very much used to that since many, many years.

Lindsay: Absolutely. What would you say is your biggest challenge at the moment and how are you working to overcome that?

Andreas: The biggest challenge in the moment is, as we call it, the problem with the baby boom generation. The baby boom generation is on the brink of retiring. Then within the next 10 years, at least Austria alone, will lose about 20,000 qualified employees per year over the time. The later generations have much less people than these baby boomers. And it’s getting increasingly difficult to find qualified personnel and to find personnel that is also willing and interested in this job. Everybody is talking about work life balance, nobody’s talking about, “I want to do a good job.” This is a real problem and there’s already going to be a war on finding and recruiting good personnel. And this is the biggest challenge for the next years in my point of view.

Lindsay: Absolutely. And I’m curious going hand in hand with that, something we’ve been talking about I think since the pandemic, is that returning to the office has been very difficult for some companies, because when you want to train people but they want to do more remote work, it’s difficult to have people who are in the office and connected and being able to be trained in the same way that people in our generation and above were trained. Are you finding similar difficulties with that?

Andreas: Very, very much. In my point of view, our job as lawyers is nothing you can do only remote. If you have to prepare for a meeting for a court hearing, you can go home, take your file with you, study the file at home and go to court, that’s no problem. But during the day-to-day work, these talks at the coffee machine, at the copy machine, whatever. Part of my work is getting up from my table, going to the next room and asking my associates, “Do you need assistance? What are you working on? How far has this matter gone?” For all this, every time if I would have to take up the phone, call this guy, the guy is just taking a break when you call, always. He’s just getting out with the dog, whatever. You never reach them. It’s terrible.

We had of course, during the pandemic quite a lot of remote work, but since the end of the pandemic, most of our people have returned to the office, and which has the big advantage that as a boss, as a partner, you are also able to build up again the social connections. The people like to come to the office, you take through your time and drink a cup of coffee with them, and also associate with another partner, whatever. And if the people are socially connected in the firm, the tendency to change firms is much lower than if you are just sitting at home in front of your computer and you have no social connections within your own firm.

In my point of view, we have a lot of big insurance companies and banks, where still 50% of the people are at home. I think that in the medium term, these firms will get quite problems, because the tendency of people to change will rise extremely. And combined with the problem I mentioned before, finding qualified personnel, if you are a company where people are very easily leaving, you double your problem of not finding and not being able to recruit sufficiently qualified personnel.

Lindsay: Absolutely. Yes. Those are two really big issues and I wonder how the next 10 years is going to play out given those two very big issues. Talk to us about the current state of the market and what that means for you and your clients.

Andreas: For the market, after COVID and the war in Ukraine, I’m still astonished how stable the whole market here in Europe is. I thought when Mr. Putin started his tiny little war in Ukraine, I thought that Europe would be in much more problems than we see until now. One part of the market is really down, that’s the real estate business due to the high inflation, due to the higher interest rates paid for loans, whatever. The interest in newly built flats, in new houses has diminished rapidly within the last 12 months. And honestly, I don’t see a change within the next 12 to 18 month in this respect. We had an overheated market, the real estate market due to high prices, due to high service prices also, all the building construction companies were extremely expensive.

The books of the big entities are still quite full, so they will have no problem in 2023, but we expect that the books will be empty in twenty-four. And I personally also expect that construction prices will go down after that. And a certain segment of the market is, as long as the inflation is high and the interest is high, we’ll not be able to take a loan and buy a flat. A part of the market is just dead, and it will take quite a long time to get back to normal at least.

Lindsay: Yes. And that’s a real challenge for some people I think, which might have a knock-on effect.

Andreas: Yes. The inflation is still too high in Europe. I don’t think it will go down as fast as we would like it to be. Very important will be the next round of raises. In the autumn in Austria, all the unions come together, and they start negotiations with the employers on raising the payments for the people. And we expect far too high raises in this respect. And this will of course keep the inflation high and put heat on the inflation situation. It will be necessary that everybody takes back a little bit of their interest to lower the inflation rates significantly.

Lindsay: Certainly. What is the biggest area that’s related to your practice that you are curious about?

Andreas: The biggest area? I’m really curious about the impact of artificial intelligence on our business. I think this will be really interesting. Nearly nobody knew ChatGPT six months ago. Now everybody’s talking about, especially Romana, my wife who is a teacher, who says that homework doesn’t make any sense because she reads ten times the same ChatGPT created homework. There will be many changes to that. I’m very curious of what changes this will bring to our profession. I still think you will probably be able to prepare certain things much faster than before, but the guidance that the lawyer should provide for his clients, you will never be able to substitute that by artificial intelligence. It may help you with texts, with court papers, whatever, but the final decision will still be with the lawyers. But I’m very curious how this will go on within the next one or two years, three years, very fast, I think

Lindsay: Yes. I agree with you, and I do hope that that’s the case, that it will free up lawyers to do what they’re really good at, obviously senior lawyers, who is giving advice, really substantive advice to their clients. As you say, I’m really interested to see where it goes. I know in the US we’ve already had two cases of lawyers being fined because they’ve used ChatGPT without actually checking the references.

Andreas: Even in Europe, we have heard about these stories. Very funny.

Lindsay: Yes. At least check before you hand that over to the judge. Come on. But the other impact, I think obviously cases like that should make people cautious, but when you see and you think about the utility of it in those cases, you think about it as a senior lawyer and it’s like, “Okay, well that could be really useful because it’ll free me up from some of the more tedious work that I’m doing to really advise my clients as a more senior lawyer.” But then I think of it from the junior lawyers and how are they going to really learn to give the advice that you as a partner already have learned to do? You don’t want it to take away from the experience that they gain over time. And I wonder how they’ll gain that experience if ChatGPT is going to do it for them.

Andreas: These are the same thoughts that I have because giving advice is easy if you have experience for many, many years. And if you have no chance to get this experience, then it’s getting difficult. But I think that especially for associates, the learning will change over time. We see it, when I was an associate, we had to look up everything in books. This is long gone. All our associates have two screens on the table and have the electronic books on the one hand and the file on the other hand, and then they switch and put copy and paste and put it into their computer, very well done. And this will be the next step. They will have to adapt and learn differently, but it will become more difficult and probably we will need less, a lower number of associates, which are, by the way anywhere, not to be found here in Austria at least.

That will perhaps bring some help with it. What we have already seen within the last two years or so, is translations. Since we are a small country, we have just neighbors only the Swiss and the Germans speak German and all the other neighbors don’t do that, so we always had lots of translation work for clients from abroad and this has become much, much easier, translating programs much better. And so, they are really good. Of course, like everything, you have to check it afterwards, but you put the file in the program, it translates it within seconds and then you take your time and then correct it for an hour or so. But that was 10 years ago, when you needed a day for that and not an hour. That’s here, really a big change has taken place and its tedious work and not really lawyers work to translate pages of court decisions, whatever.

Lindsay: Right. As you say, a lot of people are afraid that technology will take certain jobs away and it does, but it also gives jobs to people in a different way, so as things change, things change.

Andreas: Right. And as we all know, you can’t stop technical advances. No way.

Lindsay: No. It’s not worth trying.

Andreas: Yes. No, it’s not worth trying. You’re right.

Lindsay: Tell us something interesting about yourself that most people don’t know.

Andreas: I already said I’m 50 years of age and I love soccer and I’m still playing once a week soccer. We are still a group of students that started after high school to play soccer every Friday evening. And we still keep up with that after 40 years this year. And it’s much fun. It’s terrible. And Saturday morning I always think, “How will I get out of my bed? Everything hurts.” But it’s still big fun. And I really try to keep the Friday off, no invitations, no social get togethers, so I’m able to keep my soccer game up. And I hope I still can do it for a few years. We have, of course, a lot of people who have already left because of broken ligaments, whatever. It’s, of course, a terrible sport for elderly people. But I love it. That’s probably something not everybody knows about me.

Lindsay: That’s wonderful. I love that you’re still doing that after 40 years. That’s great. I wonder how many people can say that.

Andreas: Yes.

Lindsay: Who has been your biggest mentor over your career?

Andreas: That’s a good question. I had a few senior partners in my life, but they have gone with me for part of my way. But more or less my wife Romana, because that sounds a little bit old-fashioned for today’s younger people. But besides her own job, she has taken care of our kids and has given me more or less the opportunity to concentrate on my job and on my career. And that’s probably the biggest support for my career, was Romana my wife.

Lindsay: I love that. That’s really wonderful. What would you say most people misunderstand about your field of work?

Andreas: That’s probably the problem for every advisor, it always looks very easy, and nobody sees the work behind the scenes. You take your cases home, you take your cases to sleep, you wake up and think about your cases, and then you’re giving advice and then your client says, “It was only 15 minutes of work. Why is he billing so much?” This is probably the biggest misunderstanding. It’s by far more work than it looks like.

Lindsay: Well, maybe if you’re doing it right. It’s much more work.

Andreas: Yes. That’s right. That’s something I think that a lawyer who wants to be lawyer is trying to do, is deliver good advice, and that’s work.

Lindsay: Yes. Absolutely. What has been the most important lesson you’ve learned over your career?

Andreas: That’s always something I tell my associates, it’s to listen, which is to listen to your opponent or to your client even, but at court to listen to the opponent. And the second thing is to think twice before you answer. And the third is, the most difficult thing in our job is to keep your mouth shut in the necessary moment. I think it’s the most difficult thing. You have a client sitting at court beside you, there is some testimony in front of the judge, and everybody is expecting from you, courtroom movies that you are now asking the most brilliant questions. But sometimes it’s much better to keep your mouth shut, to not ask anything, to say, “Thank you. Goodbye. I have no questions.” The client is upset, “Why isn’t he asking anything?” But if you notice that this testimony has the ability to hurt your case, get rid of him as soon as possible with as few questions as possible.

I always tell my associates, “Just think if it’s really necessary to ask this question. Keep your mouth shut if it’s not really helping the case.” And this is really difficult, even after many years, I’m doing this job more than 30 years, so still I’m always thinking, “Is the next question bringing anything better for my client or do I give the testimony the chance to deposit a little bit more that is in my disadvantage?” And if this is the case, don’t ask.

Lindsay: That’s good life advice too, I think. If you’re not adding to the conversation, it’s probably better to just not say anything.

Andreas: Yes.

Lindsay: Is there a client that’s changed your practice? I know this is always a hard one.

Andreas: Yes, that’s a hard one. A client changed my practice.

Lindsay: Or impacted your practice?

Andreas: By pure luck, I got to know a guy who just opened up 10 years ago, business for photovoltaic. He installs photovoltaic on houses all over Europe, all over Austria mainly. And this was a very, very small firm, just three people starting a new business. Today, they are 140 people, still my client, which is very nice. And they are very, very successful. And the owners are two very funny guys, hardworking, decent people, but very funny. And they have probably influenced my view on alternative energy and on how to provide alternative energy all over the country. I’ve learned quite a lot of technical questions. If you sit at court and you have a court hearing, you have, of course, to prepare also from the technical point of view. And over the years I’m become quite experienced in some induced electrical engineering somehow, if you can put that this way.

And of course, since Ukraine war, they don’t know where to start. There’s a huge boom of alternative energy here in Europe, because Austria got 80% of its natural gas from Russia, 80%. And with 20th of February 2022, it was clear that this will won’t go on. We still received gas from Russia, but of course nobody knows how long. And so many people are trying to get alternative heating, alternative electricity. That’s a huge boom here in Australia and all over Europe more or less.

Lindsay: Right. Yes. That’s become a huge opportunity for them, I’m sure. That’s great. What does being a part of the ILN mean to you?

Andreas: Oh, 2024, I will be a member of the ILN for 30 years. That’s how old I am. Terrible. What does it mean? We mentioned that a little bit already in the beginning of our talk, for us, it’s somehow the window to the neighboring countries. We can offer our clients in Austria, you need somebody in Slovakia, in Czech Republic, in Croatia, in Italy. I know somebody personally, I will call him for you, I have arranged the contact to this lawyer, and this is a very important part in our business and it’s getting increasingly important over the years. But that’s only business wise. Many of the colleagues that are also since many, many years in the network, they all became friends for years and years. And I really don’t want to miss this social part of the network.

I always say a little bit, it’s also a travel club, which is also very nice. I would never travel to Northern Ireland, and I thought this weekend in Northern Ireland a few years ago was very nice, remote corners of Europe or even other parts of the world. I’ve seen over the years, meeting friends there, meeting colleagues there. Austria is not the center of the world. Many changes, I can remember the first network firms in introducing, telling them, “We now have a website.” “In Austria, what’s a website?” “Nothing.” The first time I heard that was over the network and very soon, “Okay, we need that too. And we need it soon.” We were also one of the first firms here in Austria getting a website. Today, that sounds crazy, but it’s just a few years ago.

It has many different layers. I enjoy very much the friendship of many of the lawyers in the network. And of course, the opportunities that this network gives, not only receiving referrals, but also having the opportunity to give referrals to people where I really know that these referrals are handled. I had a case in Italy for years going on and finally we have won it, and of course, represented by our Italian law firm. Very good experience over the years. Very fast answers. If I need something and I writing an email, I’m usually getting on the same day or on the next day and answer, “Yeah, we are looking on the matter. We will check that. We’ll get back to you.” It works really well.

Lindsay: I’m so glad to hear that. Very glad to hear that. And to finish one final question, outside of your business and everything going on right now, what is one thing that you are enjoying?

Andreas: Time with my family, more or less. My kids are grown up. It’s so easy that I know that I’ll soon be a member for 30 years, because when we flew to the first network meeting, our son Valentine was just six-month-old and giving it to my mother-in-law, leaving our kid the first time for a week alone was pretty difficult, especially for Romana. And now this boy is 30 years old, working as a manager in a small Austrian company, still playing semi-professional basketball, twice the size I am, is great fun. Having time with the family is probably what I really enjoy.

Lindsay: That’s wonderful. I’m so glad to hear it. Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Andreas. I’m really happy that we got the chance to chat and thank you so much to all of our listeners. We will be back next week with another guest. And in the meantime, please take a moment to rate, review, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you so much.

Law Firm ILN-telligence Podcast | Galyna Melnyk, PETERKA & PARTNERS Ukraine

Galyna Melnyk is the deputy director for the Ukrainian office of PETERKA & PARTNERS, which is also the ILN’s representative for Ukraine. In this episode, she and Lindsay discuss her optimism in the current marketplace, how continuing to work brings her peace, and the two things she’s curious about in the market.

You can listen to the podcast here, or we’ve provided a transcript of the highlights below.

Lindsay: Hello and welcome to the Law Firm Intelligence Podcast. I’m your host Lindsay Griffiths, executive director of the International Lawyers Network. And our guest this week is Galyna Melnyk of Peterka and Partners in Kyiv, Ukraine. Galyna, welcome. We are so happy to have you with us this week. To get started, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself and the firm and your practice?

Galyna: Hi Lindsay. I’m so happy to be here. So as was announced, I’m from Peterka Partners Law Firm. I’m the deputy director for Ukraine. I’ve been with this firm for more than five years. I also had the tax practice of our Ukrainian office. Our law firm was founded in the year 2000. So, we have been on the market for more than 20 years and in Ukraine we have been present since 2006. Our firm is a CEE law firm. We cover the whole region, and we are expanding. This year we opened an office in Croatia, but I will explain a little bit about our Ukrainian office. Our team is not that big, it’s around ten lawyers, but we cover the most common needs of foreign businesses, mostly European and American coming to Ukraine.

We provide full legal support for those companies who start businesses in Ukraine. For those who have some tax issues here, we provide counseling in the tax area and also we provide legal support within tax inspections and tax disputes. So basically, we would say that in Ukraine we specialize in providing complex legal support to foreign businesses doing their business in Ukrainian market. So that’s in a nutshell.

Lindsay: That’s great. Now, so we’ll dive into the questions now. The first one, I think a lot of people can imagine what your response might be, but what’s your biggest challenge at the moment and how are you working to overcome it?

Galyna: My biggest challenge is the same as my country’s. Unfortunately, it’s the war and I think that professionally wise we have to combine our emotional attitude and our work attitude in regard to what’s going on around us. Since Kyiv has been felled since maybe a year ago, we have to work in quite stressful environment. But personally myself, I just try to distance myself from that. Of course, I’m cautious and I try to listen to all those sirens and alarms, but I think that the more you concentrate on what you have to do just now, just today, just moving step by step, the more you gain inner peace and going to the office and dealing with day-to-day work helps a lot. So, my biggest challenge now is just to maintain that balance, that peace of mind. And my work helps a lot with that because it provides some stability, some routine, and in this way I benefit and our clients benefit because if you keep your mind in peace, you provide quality services.

Lindsay: Absolutely. And we spoke to your colleague a couple of months ago on the podcast and he said that you actually never stopped working from the beginning of the war. So, I know a lot of people were impressed and surprised by that, but I imagine that that’s helped as well

Galyna: Yes, definitely. And we agreed with our teams that we do not require working from the office. Basically, we just shifted from this remote work during the quarantine to remote work during the war. So, we just provide flexibility to our colleagues. They can work from any place they feel safe. They are not required to stay in Kyiv or even in Ukraine, but most of our team stays in Kyiv. So, we survive as a team, and we support each other and it’s very important for us.

Lindsay: I’m sure. And I would imagine that because of the size of your team that you’re quite close and that must help as well.

Galyna: Yes, definitely. So basically, we have this internal chat in the app and each time somebody hears something, some news about what’s going on around us, we always make sure that everyone knows and is warned should any danger be relevant. So that helps a lot.

Lindsay: Yes. So, talk to us about the current state of the market and what that means for you and your clients.

Galyna: I would say that surprisingly the market is not that afraid of the war. And I can judge based on our turnover and the figures in our company books. And I would say that surprisingly last year, 2022 was the second-best year financial wise in the history of Ukrainian office. So, businesses, even foreign businesses, were not scared off by the war. And some sectors of the economy like IT, which benefits from remote work, are now growing. And we have a lot of IT clients, both the local and foreign and also American IT companies and some of them they even have expanded. And we see that in general, Ukrainian business generates tax money for the budget, and I would say that there is no recession currently.

Of course, maybe these two or three months since Ukrainian counter offensive has been announced and there is a pause everyone maybe, but it’s not like a complete stop. Businesses are just maybe postponing some poor decisions till later this summer because they want to see the results of this counter offensive and which political decisions will be made. So, I would say in general, everything looks quite optimistic. We preserved our team; we preserved our clients and most of our clients are doing well. So, I would say that I’m optimistic for even this year. It looks quite optimistic for me and for our firm.

Lindsay: That’s great news. And I think from the perspective of the rest of the world, for us looking in, we are quite optimistic as well.

Galyna: Yes, optimism saves lives and saves businesses.

Lindsay: Absolutely.

Galyna: Because should foreign companies decide to withdraw from Ukraine, basically our economy would collapse, but they still stay in Ukraine, they employ people, they produce money for our defense. So that’s why optimism really plays a key role in this war.

Lindsay: Absolutely. So you mentioned before that your focus is on tax. So, what would you say is the biggest area related to your practice that you’re curious about and why is that?

Galyna: I would define two aspects of this. Maybe the first one is of course the war time is always the crisis time for the budget. It needs more and more money, it’s never enough money for weaponry. So, I would say now as in any crisis, during any financial crisis or other kind of crisis, usually the aim of the fiscal authorities is to collect as much revenue as possible. And now they try to make additional assessments or apply maybe fiscally directed approaches to some questions resulting in collecting additional revenue for the state budget. For now, general tax inspections are forbidden, but there have been talks that most likely they will be allowed in the nearest few months. So, I think the biggest challenge now would be that many of our clients will be audited by the tax authorities. And of course, the direction of these audits can be easily predicted because most likely there will be a lot of additional assessments made. So, I’m curious whether those assessments will be like.

Of course, in any business activity there are questionable decisions and tricky rules applicable. So of course our clients make those decisions to rely on their understanding of the law and how it should be applied. So, there’s always room for additional assessment and different interpretation of the room by the client and by the tax authority. So, I’m curious whether tax authorities would try approaching their task to collect revenue wisely, not making some ungrounded additional assessments which wouldn’t stay in court, or they would maybe just press some fiscal tendencies which have legal grounds and just maybe change some bylaws and try just press in some specific areas which have legal potential for generating more revenue. That’s one area.

And the second is that, as I mentioned IT sector is doing quite well in Ukraine and we have this special even regime, tax and legal incentive for IT companies and for big companies. So, it’s been developing, and it’s been developing quickly. And I’m curious whether it would result in new IT market players coming to Ukraine, even despite the war because the incentive is really good and some of our clients have already registered with this special, I would say, platform for IT companies. So, I’m curious whether this would help our market to attract more IT companies.

Lindsay: I imagine that it would, I can’t see why not, because as you said, it’s a fairly mobile industry and it would allow people to invest in Ukraine without having to physically be there.

Galyna: Yeah, I hope so because IT companies generate quite big portion of taxes for our budget, so it will be mutually beneficial tendency for our country.

Lindsay: Absolutely. So, switching gears a little bit, can you tell us something interesting about yourself that most people don’t know?

Galyna: I would say it concerns my main practice area tax, because when I was just the postgraduate applying for internships with big law firms, I thought I would be a civil law specialist, maybe contract lawyer or corporate lawyer. So, I applied to respective positions. And surprisingly, not surprisingly, there were a lot of students doing the same because taxes are very complicated for most, not only students but also mature lawyers. And there were so many applications, and I was filing maybe one of the last, so all the positions were filled in and I was offered this tax position with a major law firm in Ukraine at that time.

And I thought, “Okay, that’s only temporary.” And as they say, there’s nothing more permanent than those temporary decisions. And after that, even one year with that firm, there was still no open position for corporate for example or I don’t know, general commercial and distribution practice groups. So, I still stayed with tax practice and even after a year I changed my job and I also decided maybe to look in some other firm for that position. And surprisingly there were none, only tech positions available for me. So basically, I didn’t want to become a tax lawyer, just God made me.

Lindsay: Oh my gosh, that’s very funny.

Galyna: Yes.

Lindsay: Oh, it’s funny how you end up falling into your job sometimes, isn’t it?

Galyna: Yes, and basically in the end it turned out to be my calling and I enjoy it and thank God for that.

Lindsay: That’s really funny how you’re… Yes, wow. That is something interesting that people wouldn’t know.

Galyna: Maybe they should just listen to your fate.

Lindsay: That’s right. Follow the direction you’re meant to go in. Yes, that’s right. Who has been the biggest mentor over your career?

Galyna: I would say that my professors in my law school provided the most part of that practical knowledge I needed to kickstart my career. So, I would say that my university, I graduated from one of the oldest universities in Ukraine at Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. It’s like maybe four hundred years old. But when I graduated and started working in the practice area, I thought that it’s commonly known that you should forget everything you were taught in your high school, in your law school and now real life begins. But surprisingly, I was given all that practical knowledge, I was made to study all those bylaws I was actually using [inaudible] during my all five or six years in law school. So, my professors were also legal practitioners and they taught us approaches how to apply law, how to resolve tricky situations, not just like you are applying some formal approach. We studied practical cases and basically the legal mindset of a practical lawyer was we were taught to apply that mindset in practice even during my years in law school. So, my biggest mentors were my legal professors in my law school.

Lindsay: That’s great. That’s much more useful than certainly US law schools. I’m not sure about other law schools around the world, but yes, that’s really wonderful.

Galyna: And I was really surprised because I was prepared for the worst. I was prepared just to start everything anew just to learn how it works and actually turned out I already knew how it worked.

Lindsay: That’s a relief.

Galyna: Thanks to our professors.

Lindsay: That’s really a relief.

Galyna: Definitely.

Lindsay: What do most people misunderstand about your field of work?

Galyna: The major misunderstanding, which I have to explain even to our clients and maybe once a month at least, is that tax lawyers are not accountants. We cannot provide some financial assessments. We are not financial directors. We cannot provide ready-made solutions financially when we are requested to say which option would be more profitable in five years perspective. I always have to explain that I’m not authorized to give that advice because I’m not a financial professional. And also, usually I have to explain that I’m not authorized to provide any bookkeeping advice or fill in customs returns because for example, my colleagues, at least from Prague office, I know that for sure they are authorized as lawyers to provide some VAT return filing advises or even fill in VAT returns. But in Ukraine you are not allowed to do that.

As a lawyer, you are not allowed to fill in the… Not allowed, it was not my university degree, and I was not professionally trained to fill in any special tax reporting. So, I usually have to explain that and usually we have to refer our clients to some accountants or other tax professionals who are not lawyers, because in Ukraine it’s a different profession. We don’t have this special kind of professional like tax advisor. We usually have tax lawyers and separate accountants or financial advisors. But usually, clients want to refer to one person like your lawyers and all the issues are solved. So, for that purposes we engage accounting firms.

Lindsay: That’s challenging.

Galyna: Yes, and you have to do that explaining very smoothly and very carefully not to maybe scare off your clients, because sometimes the client may get this wrong understanding that you are just unwilling to get this work, you are lazy or something like that. But we have to explain that, sorry, it’s not my competence, I was not trained to do that.

Lindsay: And the idea is not that they could go somewhere else and get the same, but that they’ll get different information from another law firm. It’s true for all lawyers in Ukraine that they’ll get the same information.

Galyna: Yes, definitely. And so those who would just gladly accept any work and fill in any returns just to keep the client, I would say it’s not a very cautious approach because you are not a professional in that area. It’s risky for your reputation.

Lindsay: Absolutely. What is the most important lesson you’ve learned over your career?

Galyna: The most important lesson is more on a psychological side because the most part of my work is correspondence. The communication is mostly in written form, mostly emails. And sometimes when you discuss something with the client you may get the wrong idea of the tone of their intentions of what they want. So, it’s always better to call the client and especially if the situation is somehow tricky, you are not discussing some provisions of the contract, you are discussing some maybe strategy. It is always better to talk to your client during the video call because sometimes you may assign wrong meaning to the written words, and it is always better to clear everything out during the face-to-face online meeting.

Lindsay: Yes, and I’m interested to see with this next generation who do everything by email or text or social media, how that’s going to go. Because I think there’s a tendency to just refuse to either pick up the phone or do a video call, and I agree that there’s a lot of nuance that’s going to be lost there as a result.

Galyna: And because understanding your client is something you… It’s you gain knowledge, gain practical knowledge in addition to your law degree. And basically, we are not selling purely legal services, we are selling legal services actually meeting the needs of your client. And if you just formally reply to the text, it’s not going to work. And competitors who do actually approach the clients and have face-to-face meetings or offline meetings, they will just beat you and you will lose your clients.

Lindsay: Yes, I absolutely agree. So, speaking of clients, is there a client that changed your practice?

Galyna: Yes, there’s a big one. For confidentiality reasons, I cannot name this client like the name of the company, but it’s-

Lindsay: Of course.

Galyna: Yes, the field of its business is heavy engineering, they are quite big in Ukraine. And as a tax specialist I provided, I have been providing tech services for them since maybe I joined Peterka. And what they taught me is that even if you… Of course, business is not always ideal. It’s only on paper ideal. I mean, ideal when you just do everything formally and 100% as it is required by some rules, [inaudible] of course you are not doing some wrong. But it’s always when you’re supporting big infrastructure projects, there are always some decisions which are maybe not documented to the greatest extent. And you have to just explain something to tax authorities just from the commercial point of view and not just from some point of view of some formal documents.

And this client is a multinational company, so they provide all the documents and internal correspondence in English and then we have to compose some documents in Ukraine which are formally required. And there’s always a question of translation and sometimes the translation is not very accurate and tax authorities try to question the documents as not a correspondent to the core of the client’s business and try accusing this client of doing something, just some potential transactions. And what this client taught me as a professional is that if you trust that you are doing everything right, that you are a compliant businessperson, you are open, you do everything by the law, then you will win. Because I had to support them during numerous texts and customs disputes when we were just ordering additional expertise to establish that they did everything correct based not on the form but based on the substance, of the core substance of their business.

And they were always 100% sure that they would win because they’re doing everything right. And in Ukrainian courts it’s always 50/50 and as Ukrainian lawyer, I had to warn them that there is no 100% guarantees that you will win. But they were so convinced in their righteousness that in the end we won. All the disputes and all the controversies were combated successfully. And I would say that this is the most important lesson in my life given by that client, but by their management of course, that you should believe that you are doing everything and that’s why you should win all your cases.

Lindsay: That’s great. I really like that. Sort of having faith in yourself because you’re doing the right thing.

Galyna: Yes, because you are helping this country. You are paying taxes; you are not avoiding anything. You are just maybe, of course there may be some formal mistakes like incorrect translations from English to Ukrainian, but this does not change the substance of your business. And I was surprised that Ukrainian courts truly listen to our explanations about the substance of the business because usually they’re quite formalistic. They’re just checking the documents and if the documents are saying something which is not formally correspondent to the tax treatment of this situation, then courts will just dismiss your claim. But we managed to persuade the judge in all three instances that the essence and the substance is what matters and not some formal documents.

Lindsay: That’s fantastic. I really love to hear that.

Galyna: And that was really my personal victory and the change of my perception of the law and maybe just a suggestion of a new approach towards your position in court just psychologically. You should believe that if you do it right, you will win.

Lindsay: Yes, absolutely. That’s wonderful. So, what does being a part of the ILN mean to you?

Galyna: Being part of ILN is an integral part of our business because maybe 70% or more of assignments work comes from referrals. And ILN is a big referral network and we are integrated in these networks, so we provide referrals, we give referrals and this generate 70% of our profits. So I think that it’s very important business partner for us and we are very grateful to be a part of this, I would say family, because Pavla Prikrylova told me that when the war started, she was at the conference at that time and so many members came to her and they wished us victory and they were very supportive. We even received some emails from just online members expressing their support to Ukraine and wishing us well. So, it’s not only the business partner but we feel it like just being part of this community, of this family. So, we are very grateful to be a part of this.

Lindsay: I’m glad, I’m so glad to hear that. And one final question to wrap up. We always like to ask separate from business and everything that’s going on, what is one thing that you are enjoying right now?

Galyna: Enjoying?

Lindsay: I know it’s a tough question.

Galyna: Yes, it’s a tough one. The toughest one

Lindsay: I know.

Galyna: I think maybe enjoying is not the exact term. I would say that what brings me peace and calmness is that I can still come to the office and that everything in our office is just exactly the same it had been before the war, and it provides some sense of stability and that you still cling to all that pre-war situations and atmosphere and surroundings. And I’m really glad that that is still present and that we managed to keep our team, that we basically have all our clients. And it would have been very sad if some of our clients, for example, had to dissolve their business in Ukraine due to the war. But thank God it didn’t happen. And for me that the possibility to be in that usual environment, that is stable, relatively of course, stable situation in my workplace, and of course in Kyiv, it’s the most important thing to me. And I cling to that. It gives me hope and peace and this helps me work better.

Lindsay: Absolutely. And we certainly do wish all of you peace hopefully sooner rather than later. And anything that brings you peace is a very good thing and we’re really looking forward to an end to the war and to the conflict. And we’re really pulling for all of you. I was just at a dinner last week and the defense attaché to Ukraine was there. We were really excited to see him as well as a number of other Ukrainians. So, we’re hoping for a peaceful end to the war very soon.

Galyna: Yes, we are too. Thank you for your support. It really matters to us. Thank you, Lindsay.

Lindsay: Good. Thank you very much. I’m so glad you could join us this week for the podcast. And to all of our listeners, please continue to send your support to Ukraine and thank you so much for joining us. If you like the podcast, please take a moment to rate, review, and subscribe and we will be back next week with our next guest. And thank you so much.

Galyna: Thank you.

Law Firm ILN-telligence Podcast | Alan Silverstein, Connolly Gallagher

Alan Silverstein is a partner at Connolly Gallagher LLP in Wilmington, Delaware, where the firm represents the ILN. In this episode, Lindsay and Alan discuss the state of the patent market, the potential consequences for litigation funding of market constriction, and the very real impact of working from home on associate advancement.

You can listen to the podcast here, or we’ve provided a transcript of the highlights below.

Lindsay: Hello, and welcome to the Law Firm ILN-telligence Podcast. I’m your host, Lindsay Griffiths, executive director of the International Lawyers Network. Our guest this week is Alan Silverstein with Connolly Gallagher in Delaware. Alan, welcome. We’re really happy to have you with us. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself, and the firm, and your practice?

Alan: Sure. Thanks, Lindsay, and I’m really happy to be here as well, and also happy to be a member of ILN. I’m a partner at Connolly Gallagher in Wilmington, Delaware. We are, by Delaware standards, a mid-size firm of around thirty attorneys. My practice focuses on complex commercial disputes with an emphasis in intellectual property litigation. I started my career doing exclusively patent litigation and I’ve branched out from there.

My firm serves clients in Delaware across the United States and abroad. In addition to our commercial litigation practices, we do corporate litigation. We have an active trust and estates group, and an active labor and employment group. We also represent local government frequently here in Delaware. My practice is both Delaware council, which some people call the local council, as well as lead counsel work here in Delaware and outside the State.

Lindsay: Great. So, what would you say is your biggest challenge at the moment and how are you working to overcome that?

Alan: My biggest challenge, and this might be personal to me, is staffing and delegation. We want to be able to give our associates and staff a good work-life balance and the flexibility to work from home and things like that. We think that’s really important. It’s one of the things at our firm that we operate on pretty heavily is making sure that our staff and associates are happy. But being a small firm with essentially one location and low overhead means that working with staff in-person does take on a significant importance.

One of the things I’m finding here in Wilmington is that national and larger firms have a very different perspective, for example, a national firm with the Delaware office has its paralegals at any given location support attorneys, in any case, in any other location at that national firm. So, work from home for them makes a lot of sense. Obviously, the situation is different for us as a one-office firm here in Wilmington. I’ll caveat that with, we have an office in Newark, Delaware as well just down the road, but we’re essentially one location.

The same for staff would be true for our associates as well. National firms put together litigation teams across offices, so it doesn’t really matter if folks are in the same office or working from home. Again, that’s something we don’t really do. So smaller firms like ours that have a tight-knit culture in one location wind up being at a disadvantage when recruiting and retaining staff and associates.

Separately, after joining Connolly Gallagher a couple of years ago, I have much more control over my cases and I’m higher up on the scale than I was at my previous, significantly larger firm. Learning to pass work off to associates and staff and not doing everything myself, or even expecting that work’s going to roll downhill towards me, has been a bit of a change. So exclusive to me, that’s a pretty big challenge for me on my own. I note that change to being at Connolly Gallagher’s only a couple of years now, but it’s been a very happy change. Part of the reason for me coming here was to have more control over my practice, and that certainly has happened.

Lindsay: I would imagine too that given the timing of your move and then everything that happened with the pandemic, that was unique, not that it wouldn’t be a challenge at any time that that happened because I’m very much the same way where I like to have control over my work and being able to delegate is a big challenge for me, but given that the pandemic was sort of happening at the same time, it’s hard when you are navigating that, being out of the office, then coming back to the office and getting to know people and figuring out how do you connect with people and then pass on work to them, when there wasn’t really that in-office piece in the beginning.

Alan: Absolutely. When I made the move here to Connolly Gallagher, my previous firm had only recently reopened its office, and I remember coming back to that firm and seeing twenty-three new associates that had just taken the bar that I had never met in person before essentially.

Lindsay: Wow.

Alan: So, it certainly is a unique experience. Then I moved over here to Connolly Gallagher very shortly thereafter and had a lot of new people to meet and form new relationships with. Certainly, a big time of change towards the end of the pandemic.

Lindsay: Yes, definitely, definitely. So how about the current state of the market overall and the impact on your clients and your practice?

Alan: Sure. Well, the patent litigation practice is relatively stable. Even when the economy is down, companies want to protect their inventions. Of course, companies are worried about the economy and there’s some tightening of the purse strings, but it’s not a huge swing as you might see in other practices. We have a lot of transactional or transactional-adjacent matters here at our firm. Those are down, of course, as is litigation for transactional matters. Delaware is a center for merger and acquisition litigation, so we expect to see some softening there, but at the same time, we expect to see bankruptcy grow significantly as a result of the current market. We do bankruptcy work here as well.

As for my clients specifically, I will see them being more cost-conscious than they would maybe in the past. We’re fairly competitive with rates compared to other firms in town, so I see less pressure from my clients to reduce rates or reduce retainers or things like that. But I think if the economy continues to soften, companies are going to look for ways to avoid litigation, which is the majority of what I do, and look for more cost-effective solutions. Fortunately, we have those sorts of solutions available including alternative dispute resolution, mediation, and arbitration, which might help our clients cut costs as economic uncertainty grows.

Lindsay: Yes, absolutely. You’re talking a lot about how the patent market is really sort of stable. I mean, obviously, as you say, things might change depending on what clients are looking at. So, what, for you, is the biggest area related to your practice that you are most curious about?

Alan: The area that I am the most curious about in patent practice is seeing whether or not litigation funding increases or decreases in the future. There are a lot of entities out there that are supporting non-patent and non-practicing entity patent litigation, as well as a lot of entities looking just to support patent litigation in general, especially for small businesses. I’m curious if, as the economy potentially slows, that money to support litigation is going to still be out there. I get hit up multiple times a day with litigation funding offers via email that can’t be an endless flow of money in the future, and I wonder if we’ll see less patent cases as a result.

Lindsay: I would think, in the same vein, as the market constricts a little bit, more companies would want that litigation funding as the market constricts.

Alan: That’s certainly possible. Patent litigation is a little bit of a gamble. Some entities have been able to monetize it. I even know of a couple of firms here in town that attempted at one point to start their own cottage business of financing patent litigations with varying degrees of success. I would think that good-quality patent cases will continue to get funding. Non-practicing entity cases where the payoff might not be sufficient will not see funding in the future.

Lindsay: Sure, that makes sense. So, what would you say is something most people misunderstand about your field of work?

Alan: I think people don’t understand what a patent actually gives you the right to do. It gives you the right to exclude others from making your invention. It does not prevent others from competing with you or doing things that are similar to your invention.

Regularly, I have new, potential clients call me and talk about getting a patent for their invention and they describe it to me in wonderful detail and it’s a very good idea, but it’s such a specific device with such a specific purpose, that the exclusion rights that come with an issued patent might not be valuable to that client at the end of the day. That’s why it’s important for inventors to understand early in the invention process what sort of intellectual property rights they might have and how they might protect them in the future.

Lindsay: Which is why, the overarching lesson I always get from talking to lawyers, no matter what the field is, bring your lawyer in, early and often.

Alan: Absolutely. I know people will think that we want that so that we can generate the fees, but we really are looking out for you. It’s easier to plan ahead than it is to fix mistakes.

Lindsay: That’s right, and less expensive.

Alan: Absolutely.

Lindsay: So, tell us something interesting about yourself that most people don’t know.

Alan: This is a good question. Well, as we talked about at the beginning of the day today, most people don’t know that I have family in Singapore and that I spent a large part of my childhood in Singapore. Three months a year during the summer, sometimes a couple of weeks at Christmas. My mother was one of eight children. So, I have family in Singapore. I also have three aunts and assorted cousins in Sydney, Australia from my mother’s side of the family, and I have family in Leeds, in the United Kingdom from that part of my family as well. So, traveling to see family takes on a whole new meaning.

Lindsay: Seriously, especially Singapore and Australia, those are really extensive flights.

Alan: It is. My wife and I have been married for 10 years and she has still not met some of my Australian relatives, unfortunately.

Lindsay: I believe it. I believe it. What is your favorite thing to see when you’re traveling, besides the people, of course?

Alan: Sure. So, anybody that goes to Singapore regularly will tell you it’s the food. The food in Singapore is the best I’ve ever had anywhere in the world. It’s a mixing of Indonesian, Malaysian, and Chinese cultures and it absolutely can’t be beat. The other great part about Singapore is, it is a tropical island. It’s a tiny island at the end of the Malaysian Peninsula and you’re really in the middle of a rainforest. It’s a beautiful place to visit and I encourage everybody to go.

Lindsay: Yeah, I’ve been there a couple of times and I love it. I couldn’t agree more. Okay. So who has been your biggest mentor over your career?

Alan: It was one of the first partners I worked for, a predecessor from Connolly Gallagher where I’m at now. It was [inaudible], and I worked with a partner attorney that had me take an expert deposition the January after I was admitted to the bar in September. So, four months later, he put me in a seat to take the deposition of an expert in a multimillion-dollar patent case. He gave me those opportunities and developed me as an attorney right from the get-go, and those experiences are invaluable.

I think one of the biggest problems we have in growing associates is we just don’t give them enough opportunities. I know fifth, sixth, seventh-year associates here in Wilmington that have never taken a deposition, which have not stood up in court and argued a discovery motion. That’s really a shame because they’re missing these opportunities to develop their skills early. Early skill development is not only good because you have those skills sooner, but also, you don’t get in any bad habits or you see things that you might not have seen as a senior associate, have you not had those experiences early on.

So that partner set my career on a great trajectory by giving me those early experiences. At the same time, he didn’t let me get away with anything because I was a first or second year. If I messed something up, he let me know about it immediately, and that’s an important learning experience as well. Oftentimes, first, second-year associates are starved for feedback, and they get told that no news is good news. That’s not true. First and second years should be getting the bad news, even if it’s just from a mentoring or a teaching perspective. They should know what’s being changed in their work product before it goes out the door.

Lindsay: Absolutely. One of the things that all of us, I think, have learned in recent years is that there’s a lot to be learned from failure, that failure is not a bad thing, and that you can’t grow without it.

Alan: Absolutely. You remember and you learn the most from your failures or your difficult times or your challenges than you do from the things that were easy. I can remember every bad argument I ever made in front of a judge. The good ones, I just remember as a win.

Lindsay: Sure. Exactly right. You hope you remember what you did right, but as you say, you just sort of remember the feeling that went with it, but the bad things, you remember every single detail.

Alan: And you never make that mistake again, hopefully.

Lindsay: No, no. Do you think I’m curious, you’re talking a lot about the associates, and you spoke before about this work-life balance and not doing as much work from home in a mid-size firm like Connolly? That’s something that we’ve been exploring a lot with some other guests, is this idea that a lot of the associates are missing some of the knowledge, the experience, and the learning that previous generations were getting by being in the office. Is that something that you’re seeing, I mean not necessarily at your firm, but across this generation of associates?

Alan: Absolutely, and it was something that we talked about a lot during the pandemic. As a senior attorney, if you don’t have a relationship or know the junior attorneys, you’re much less likely to give them work in the first place, be it give them development opportunities like I was just talking about, and it’s not because they might not be good at it or they might have difficulty with it. It’s simply because you don’t know who they are and there’s no sense of a firm culture as them being a part of it.

I think that’s the most difficult part of the work-from-home environment that we now find ourselves in, is getting those opportunities where senior attorneys, partners, and senior associates alike, and junior attorneys are in the same room so that there can be that sense of team that encourages proper work assignment, proper development opportunities, and things like that. It’s a very tough problem to traverse because I think the younger associates don’t view talking to attorneys on the phone or via Zoom to be as different as the senior attorney’s view speaking in person and having that relationship.

I worked on a team previously where our three offices were right next door to each other, and we did a lot of cases together. Being able to walk next door and just talk about something for a couple of minutes and then the five-minute conversation that ensues after about what you did this weekend, is invaluable to having a team feeling it, and then in turn, having these development opportunities come up.

Lindsay: Yes, and as much as I love Zoom and the technological opportunities that have arisen during the pandemic, there is just no way to replicate being in person, unfortunately. As much as you try to be intentional about it, you just really can’t replicate it.

Alan: Absolutely.

Lindsay: So, what would you say is the most important lesson you’ve learned over your career?

Alan: The most important lesson I’ve learned over my career is that before I give an answer, I have to be sure of what that answer is, and I’m sure you’ve heard this before from other attorneys. You might have seen recently in the news there was a slide deck from Paul Hastings that came out that was advice to junior associates there. One of the things on that slide deck was, “I don’t know is never an answer,” and I really disagree with that advice. If I’m a junior associate, in particular, and a question is asked of me and I am not sure of what the answer is, tell them that. The last thing you want to have happen is a fact ending up in a brief that you never got to review that you said was true and winds up being false. It’s not just limited to arguments before the court and things like that.

You want to make sure that your colleagues have confidence in you and that when they ask you a question, they know that they’re getting the right answer. It’s very easy as a young associate, or even a senior attorney working with a client, to lose reputation because you gave an answer that turns out not to be correct.

Lindsay: Absolutely. I think early in my career I learned that “I don’t know, but I’ll find out,” it’s absolutely an acceptable answer.

Alan: I think so too. I think that good attorneys that we’re in the same place that junior associates are now, recognize when associates are able to say that and then actually find the answer, that’s the kind of associate you want on your team.

Lindsay: Right. Absolutely. I couldn’t agree more. How about a client that changed your practice?

Alan: It was the first client that I had where I was running the litigation on my own, and you learn all the things that you don’t realize you have to be paying attention to. At the end of the day, the client had a positive outcome, but I learned that even if there’s a positive outcome, how you get there is really important. There were some real speed bumps along the way in that case, and while the client was happy at the end of the day, the client might not have had the greatest faith in me going forward after that because of how long it took us to get there.

I think it’s important to recognize, as a young attorney, where you prioritize certain aspects of your practice and how you’re going to handle cases like that when you’re on your own for the first time. I might have been more worried about what my partners and my senior associates that I worked with were thinking about the case, than what the client was thinking about the case. A very important lesson that I will never make that mistake again.

Lindsay: See, there you go. But you learned from it, and that’s the main thing. So, what does being a part of the ILN mean to you?

Alan: Being a part of the ILN is actually a very new experience for me. As I said, I’ve only been here at Connolly Gallagher for a little less than two years at this point, but the dividends have already paid off. I have a great working relationship now with a firm in Philadelphia that I basically didn’t know two years ago. I met somebody at the last ILN conference from the UK that, two months later, called me back with a matter that I would’ve never expected to get.

It’s not so much the business development opportunities, which, of course, are a valuable part of it, but the friendship and the relationships that come out of it, these aren’t just people that I do business with or provide legal services to, these are people that I’m now friends with and I look forward to speaking with and seeing at the next ILN conference. I think that that’s a unique part of ILN that I haven’t seen in other professional organizations that I’ve been a part of. The camaraderie and the relationship aspect shine through with this group.

Lindsay: That’s great. I’m really glad to hear it. And one final question, what is something that you’re really enjoying right now that has nothing to do with work?

Alan: That has nothing to do with work.

Lindsay: Yes.

Alan: All right.

Lindsay: That’s always the hardest question.

Alan: That is the hardest question. I wasn’t ready for this one. Let’s see here. Well, this is a very personal thing, but I think others will have experienced the same. I’ve lived in my house with my wife now for 12 years. We’re finally redoing our bathrooms, and it is actually the most fun experience I’ve had in a while. Making those choices and making it exactly what you want it to be is a lot of fun. I’ve never done major renovations or things like that on a house before, and this has been a lot of fun. We’re almost done with the first bathroom, the guest bathroom, and then we’ll move on to the master soon.

Lindsay: That’ll be great. It’ll be so rewarding when it’s finished.

Alan: Yes, absolutely.

Lindsay: Wonderful. Well, Alan, thank you so much for joining us. I really appreciate you being here with us today. To all of our listeners, thank you as well. We’ll be back again next week with our next guest, and in the meantime, please take a moment to rate, review, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you so much.

Alan: Thanks, Lindsay. It was a pleasure.

Law Firm ILN-telligence Podcast | Cosmina Romelia Aron and Ioana Sebestin-Nazâru, PETERKA & PARTNERS, Romania

Cosmina Romelia Aron and Ioana Sebestin-Nazâru are partners with PETERKA & PARTNERS in Romania, where they represent the ILN. In this episode, Lindsay discusses with Cosmina and Ioana the adaptability that having a diverse offering gives them, and how things have changed for them as lawyers and as friends, as well as what they have learned.

You can listen to the podcast here, or we’ve provided a transcript of the highlights below.

Lindsay: Hello and welcome to the Law Firm Intelligence podcast, I am your host, Lindsay Griffiths, Executive Director of The International Lawyers Network. We have two guests for you this week, Cosmina Aron and Ioana Sebestin from PETERKA PARTNERS in Bucharest, Romania, we’re really excited to have you both here this week. Thank you so much for joining us. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about your firm and your practice?

Cosmina: Hi Lindsay.

Lindsay: Hi.

Cosmina: Thank you for inviting us. This is Cosmina, with my colleague Ioana Sebestin, and we are happy to be here and to have a talk with you. So, as I said, I’m Cosmina Aron, and for the last, actually more than 10 years I’ve been managing the Bucharest office of PETERKA PARTNERS. As you might know, PETERKA PARTNERS is a regional law firm, an international regional law firm with a presence in central and Eastern Europe. We have around nine offices.

Now we are more or less present in Russia, so we closed somehow Russia, so we have only nine. Recently we have opened Croatia and we are very proud of it. In terms of practice, I’m a corporate M&A lawyer at my origin, but during the last years I’ve been managing the office, so more or less I’ve been doing a lot of things in various areas. Ioana, please?

Ioana: So, hi again, Lindsay, thank you for inviting me and for having this conversation with me, Lindsay. And I’m Ioana Sebestin, you have not heard of me so far. I am deputy director of the PETERKA PARTNERS, Bucharest office. I have been with Cosmina for 10 years doing this. It was a very interesting and challenging time.

Cosmina: Even before we used to work together actually.

Ioana: Yes, she’s been my mentor, I’ve been her junior lawyer.

Lindsay: Oh, wow.

Cosmina: Yes, in the previous law firm we used to work together as well.

Lindsay: That’s very cool.

Ioana: It was because to be honest, I took-

Cosmina: She did come on.

Ioana: It is, it’s just that at that moment it really was because I took the job because of Cosmina because I liked her a lot and I said, “Yes, I have a lot to learn from her.” We are still doing a lot of things together and learning and developing and everything.

Lindsay: That’s wonderful.

Ioana: Yes. And as far as my practice is concerned, I’ve been lucky enough to try several domains, I have to admit, and it’s been very challenging, but on the other hand very satisfying. For the last years I’ve worked more on labor law, I can say this is my main practice. But, due to the concept of all open and how we are working and the Romanian market, which is quite specific, we always try to work and try to develop in many domains and be faced with everything that’s new. And always prepare to maybe change the domain. So yes, labor law. I’m doing corporate and commercial domains, basically. But in the past I also tried competition a lot, also when I was a junior Cosmina even sent me to court for me to be certain if I liked it or not. So yes, it’s very interesting and very nice.

Lindsay: That must be a benefit to your clients too, to be so well-rounded.

Ioana: Yes, and I think one of the things that I saw when I was just a junior lawyer and I considered plus, to better understand the business of the clients. And by that, also trying to learn, okay in school when Cosmina took me, to say all the time you have to look in the books, but that’s it. And it was very interesting to try and put what you learn into practice, because I was lost-

Cosmina: We were all lost at the beginning.

Ioana: Yes. We did not do too much practice in university, we did, but it’s something else than-

Cosmina: Close to zero actually.

Ioana: Yes. Now times changed a little bit, but then we had no practice, and like Cosmina said it’s good that you know where to look in the books. But we need you to learn to do things and also to try to understand what the clients are doing, and how we can help them. Yes, it helps a lot, because in our day-to-day business clients come in with different issues. And it’s true, all of us have some domains in which we are more or less experts because we are working on them, but there are questions that it’s better to know about it, at least from where to better understand the problem, and then work with somebody that is an expert on this. But it helps, at least at this stage, to understand the client and the needs.

Cosmina: Yes, to have some overall picture I would say, because it’s quite… In a transaction for example, it’s really important to be able to identify possibly legal issues so that you know where to go and in which domain it should be investigated more or something like that. But I would just like to add that for you to understand Lindsay, in Romania we are a bit different than in the US. Typically, US local lawyers have a lot of focus on certain domains, lawyers are specialized, very specialized. I know this from, I learn that all the time, it’s shocking for some US lawyers when I’m telling them that I’m doing corporate, I’m doing real estate, and sometimes labor. It’s very difficult for them to understand that someone can do so many things. But most probably due to the market and the fact that we are quite a young country in terms of legal services because the lawyers’ profession started in this structure and in this sense after the 1990s.

So, I think the first law firm in Romania was created in 1992, but it started in 1995 basically they started to exist as such, and to take over the Western model. So, we are quite used to diverse domains, and it doesn’t happen very often that some particular lawyer does only one thing. So at least two fields you need to cover. It’s also about diversity, it’s like a part of the region, and we look at it from a practical perspective as well.

For example, when I joined PETERKA, because in the former law firm, we had too much exposure to real estate, so when the crisis came we had to make a move because we didn’t have saved that much at the time. So, this is actually the reason I’m here, otherwise, I would have been still there probably. Yes, so we got used to this diversity, it’s maybe a protection vision that we took because like this we can survive the market. It’s a very challenging market and you never know if you will have enough work in a certain domain, so we have to be prepared for everything actually.

Ioana: It really was constant training, Lindsay.

Cosmina: Yes.

Lindsay: That makes a lot of sense, and that leads to one of my other questions. I know we see that with, as you say, a lot of the US firms where there’ll be a constriction in the market and so corporate lawyers won’t have a lot of work to do because that’s the only area of practice that they focus on. So, can you talk to us a bit about the current state of the market and what that means for you and your clients? Is that something that has a big impact? Or, because you are so diversified you’re able to just pivot and work with them as clients because you practice in several different areas and so you’re really just responding to the needs of the market as a whole?

Cosmina: Yes, that helps a lot actually, because we are working a lot these days on day-to-day matters. Day-to-day matters is everything, corporate labor contracts, competition, and real estate, all together in a small-

Ioana: Litigation.

Cosmina: Litigation, on a daily basis, so yes, it helped a lot actually. Without this, we wouldn’t have been able to survive the crisis and the changing of the market. Because definitely, the market has changed a lot during the last years. There are a lot of challenges. In terms of everything, in terms of people, in terms of business, in terms of money, in terms of-

Ioana: In terms of legislation.

Cosmina: Legislation, in terms of digitalization and the approach to business. So, there are so many changes that we are facing every day, but this diversity and this adaptability I would call it, helped us a lot. Because it happens quite often that we are trying new domains. Of course, as Ioana said, we have people who are specialized in real estate, corporate, in comfortable or some other things. But this doesn’t mean that they are not able to do something else. Basically, we are trying to… Even when we are doing new hiring, we are all the time looking for these kinds of people that are willing and able to adapt. This happened in the past, some of our colleagues left the firm because they said it was too much diversity.

Ioana: Yes, and you need to keep up. It’s tiring at some point, because you’re like, “You know, I just want to do this because this I know. It’s becoming easy, I can predict most of the things. Why not have a comfortable life doing this what I’ve learned?” No, you cannot because you need to adapt. And things are changing in all fields like Cosmina said, I totally agree with her. And you need to keep up because in the end, I think it’s like in life, you need to try to do your best, but you need to understand that you need to adapt.

Cosmina: Like cooking, for example, we had to adapt, yes? So, this is… We have been living with some COVID for years now, it’s not exactly COVID.

Ioana: No, but it’s new things like the pandemic, and after the pandemic then we had this not great position with the war.

Cosmina: Yes, with the war, of course. So, all the time there is something.

Lindsay: You were already ready for a pandemic because you were already adapting?

Ioana: Yes.

Cosmina: When we were in school they were telling us that we… Because we are the generation after Ceaușescu, so they were telling us… I was ten when Ceaușescu died. So, they were telling us, “You are the new generation, we are going to experiment everything on you.” So, I amount first generation on which-

Ioana: Not really Cosmina, they kept saying the same thing for me, and I’m four years after. They kept the speech for a few generations actually, so it’s okay.

Lindsay: You took that seriously?

Ioana: Yes, we did.

Lindsay: Yes.

Ioana: For some time, we needed to get really serious, and we were like, “Yes, we know this, we’re the sacrifice.”

Cosmina: Yes, we switched from Russian in school to English.

Lindsay: Wow, that’s a big change.

Ioana: Yes. I didn’t have the opportunity to gain experience in Russian, but I was the first… I was the first to learn that year.

Lindsay: Wow. Yes, wow!

Ioana: All of a sudden we became the English generation.

Lindsay: Yes, that’s a big change.

Ioana: My husband, for example, who’s three years older than me, studied Russian.

Lindsay: Yes, and then it depends on who you’re doing business with.

Ioana: Yes.

Cosmina: Yes, it depends on a lot, but in PETERKA PARTNERS, I have to say we have many generations of violence. So, it really doesn’t have this veneer, or who is worried about the language. Generally, we speak English, or we speak French. And, when you’re at a professional level when you’re dealing with people, at a certain level, you’re speaking the same language. I have to admit, for me at least, I was very lucky to be able to work in this kind of international environment because definitely can see that people are people in the end, and the good ones are good, irrespective of where they are born, irrespective of their background. And this is the main point for us to keep going. Because you know in the end that there are good people, and not only, in the end, to collaborate with some good people.

Lindsay: I agree.

Cosmina: It’s an experience.

Lindsay: Yes, I agree. So, what is your biggest challenge at the moment?

Cosmina: I think Ioana already answered the question, keeping up is the biggest challenge.

Lindsay: True.

Cosmina: And you said something else Lindsay and you’re right, because all the clients are also trying to adapt because the market is changing. And we have to adapt together with them and to be able to help them because all the time, even in the pandemic we’re discussing, we are not able to assist a client when it needs, then why do you need a lawyer?

Ioana: I still remember one, it’s a client that I used to have in the past. He was pushing a lot and all the time I was-

Cosmina: Yes, he pushed regularly.

Ioana: He pushed a lot. Yeah, I’m surprised maybe. So, I was very afraid because I was very young, and I was afraid that we would make a mistake. I was telling him, “Look, you know, you are pushing me too much, I’m not able to check everything.” He was like, “Trust me, it’s better to have the less perfect contract when you need it, rather than having the perfect contract when you don’t need it anymore.” So, this is still valid. I’m still in contact with that client, maybe he will hear me somehow.

Cosmina: He was very right.

Ioana: Yes, at the time I was like, “Oh my God, it’s not possible. I didn’t agree too much because he was really pushy. And for me-

Cosmina: Under pressure, yes.

Ioana: Under a lot of pressure, I was very young, I was not very sure of what I knew and what I didn’t know. So yes, but it’s true, you need to be there in time to provide business advice. And this has changed a lot, the clients need pragmatic, proactive advice, they don’t need anymore these kinds of long memos explaining the legislation and teaching them because the client is the manager. The client is not… Of course, he can be something, an advisor, but still is there as a manager, a legal manager. So, he doesn’t have time to check the doctrine, to think about theories, he wants to get to the point advice and then find a solution, and that’s it.

When I started my career in the French law firm, we used to have a completely different approach. We were writing pages, due diligence is two hundred pages, four hundred pages. I remember we once had an issue with transferring the due diligence report because it was so big that the system did not allow it.

Cosmina: Yes, it’s true.

Ioana: It was during privatization, and it was quite complicated to send a report, apparently. I was not in charge, I was very young at the time, but I heard that they had difficulties sending the report to the client. So now it’s no longer the case, we have a due diligence report in a few pages and it’s just a table with colors, it’s green or yellow or red, or red flag, that’s all. So, this has changed a lot, I think. And in a way, it’s better. For the client, I think it’s more useful because in the end anyhow they read only the executive summary in the past. No one was reading the entire report, only in case there was an issue. But now they don’t need it.

If there is no issue written in the report, they will come back to you and ask you why there is no issue mentioned. Which, I like this approach somewhat better because it means that our work is more efficient and we are focused on results and on issues, not description, yes? Because it took a lot of time to describe all the matters that in the end were completely irrelevant. So, this has changed a lot and I think it’s a good thing.

Cosmina: Yes, the profession changed a lot. In the past, you were more like an advisor writing pages and papers. But in the past years, indeed we have become more active and more involved in the business of the client. And it’s mandatory somehow to understand-

Ioana: In business maybe, in the business of client.

Cosmina: Yes.

Ioana: Because in the past they were looking at us as their law firm, now we are part of the team. Even if we are external lawyers. So, they’re involving the lawyers more in the business due to this pragmatism actually, because in order to be pragmatic and to be straight to the point you need to know the business. You cannot put there all the disclaimers, if and when. No, no, no, you need to know if it’s if or when. This is clear, so that’s why we are more involved, and the clients are also more open-minded in this.

Lindsay: It sounds like it makes the work much more interesting too.

Cosmina: Yes, it really is, because this is a very interesting job and profession. It changed a lot that day, of course, it also changed the pace. So, we don’t have two weeks to write a memo, we have to do it in a few days. So, it is more pressure somehow, but on the other hand, you are more open in discussions with the clients. Like, “Okay, what do you need? How can I provide you with this? Can you give me more information on this?” It’s a more open channel with the client than it used to be. You just receive the task, maybe you have something or not, and then you prepare something, and you write-

Ioana: It was theoretical.

Cosmina: And also, let’s not forget the fact that in the past we did not have so many digital tools, not in Romania. Yes, we had nothing. Do you still remember the official…

Ioana: Yes, Cosmina used to send me when I was a junior, she was like, “Do you still have your library card?” It was like, “Yes.” “Come on, we need these books, you need to go and take them because we don’t have them.” Okay. So, I went to the library to get some materials, because we could not have all the official, all the books and so on and so forth.

Cosmina: And Hugo was not very friendly at the time.

Lindsay: That’s amazing.

Ioana: Yes.

Lindsay: Wow!

Ioana: We were checking the official visits on a daily basis, just seeing what’s new. Because the legislative program that we used to have, they were not updated.

Cosmina: No.

Ioana: So, they were something like one or two weeks behind somehow.

Lindsay: And that takes a lot of extra time too.

Cosmina: Yes, of course.

Ioana: But things have changed now, it’s really…

Cosmina: So, for us, we have to embrace digitalization.

Ioana: Yes, a lot.

Cosmina: We have the legislative programs, and we have the case law, which is available in the pack, if you’re just looking and finding something, but not all the time you have to go directly to the websites of the courts. So yes, it helped a lot because you have more, and you can get more information in a quicker time.

Ioana: It helps, being more efficient.

Cosmina: Yes.

Lindsay: Absolutely.

Ioana: Of course, you need to keep up with all of these changes because if you are an old-fashioned lawyer it might be difficult.

Lindsay: Yes, absolutely. And even more so then if you’re trying to keep up with multiple practices.

Cosmina: Yes, but you have to Lindsay, because you have a client that maybe wants a change, and then because you don’t know… This is linked to something else, and because you agree with making some changes before you may seem irrelevant. You are going to have a problem. He might have a problem with authorization. So that’s why when somebody’s asking something, you’re calling from the other room or calling the text advisor or something like this. So, it’s more dynamic because this is how we can try and prevent other issues. So yes, it is challenging, but as I said, it’s also more dynamic.

Ioana: The legislation doesn’t help us too much, because all the time we have legislative changes. At least text, legislation is changing all the time. Now, I’d never be able to say it like this, or this is like that, just because one week ago or two weeks ago we did it for a client. No, no, you have to check again because you don’t know what happened two weeks ago.

Cosmina: Yes.

Lindsay: That’s amazing.

Cosmina: Yes, this is typical of underdeveloped countries. Under continuous development.

Lindsay: So, given all of that and all of the work you’re doing, do you think it’s possible to have what they call a work/life balance, and what does that even mean?

Cosmina: Sure. Sure.

Lindsay: Do you? Okay, all right, so what does that look like?

Cosmina: Yes, I think I have balanced a bit-

Ioana: If you want I can start on this because for me it’s in here. I don’t have to think, I can…

Cosmina: So, work/life balance appeared like a necessity. In the past we had no idea what it means to have a work/life balance, what does that even mean? I just wanted to have to work, faster, faster, and work and see different things and be involved in negotiations and grow up.

Ioana: Yes. To grow, that was the main idea, just to grow and to work and work nights, it’s what’s natural. For all my colleagues through the generations, it was like it was. But then there is some point when you keep up at this level, and you notice that you are all the time tired. By the way, we did not have the notion of burnout, we did not know what this is, and it’s rather new in Romania, this concept, but definitely after you keep up with this, you’re exhausted. And at some point, you stop feeling the need to check your emails at ten in the evening. So, this is how it started. And you start like, maybe it’s not that bad to see my friends I did not see in six months.

The first step after you impose some limits, you decide that, look, I can work until seven, it’s okay, nothing is going to… The law firm is going to be okay even if I’m not going to sleep there anymore. So, I have my colleagues, okay, they can help me. Because all the time it was like, “Ioana, you have to learn to delegate.” Okay. So yes, it started step by step and in the end, I’ve noticed that it’s an improvement. It’s an improvement in how I see work, how I feel, and of course, for me, I have to admit that before these talking, and before the pandemic. And it was like, I need to be the best version I can in every day. If I’m exhausted all the time and I can barely get up out of bed, this is not going to help me, it’s not going to help the law firm, it’s not going to help my colleagues, my friends, my family.

So it was, let me process for me personally, because I think, okay, you have to do this. And I enjoyed my work, but I have something else besides the work. And there are things that make me happy. Yes, my job makes me happy, but I also have my friends, my husband, and I have my family. So, they take time, and I cannot be getting worn, and I can barely talk. Of course, it happens from time to time, I’m not going to lie, it happened, but this should not be the rule, this should be the exception.

And it also changed a lot probably because the rules also changed, because in the past everybody was like, “We need to grow, we need to be big.” And slowly, slowly, everybody started, we need to take time, we need to be careful. We even receive messages from this respect, like, “Okay, you need to take a vacation, everybody should not reach burnout.” Or something like this. So, everybody learned from this. So yes, work balance is a necessity. So, before all this discussion it was a necessity, and I think even if in our profession, in which we know that we have some predisposition with control, work, and sales, we’re not in the best of jobs as far as this is concerned, mentally. So, I think even in the past we tried to do this step by step.

So, it was a necessity, it was something that showed up after a period in which you have to learn about yourself. As I said, also from inside the law firm we have these kinds of things. So, it was not only in our office, but it was also in all levels, from the high levels-

Cosmina: In most law firms there is a change in this respect. I think the approach has changed in the meantime during the last years, because in the past they had this opinion that lawyers should work a lot and long hours and everything, but now I think everyone is trying to understand whether these long hours and really needed and whether you can do better and come up to some balance.

Ioana: The pandemic was like a warning call.

Cosmina: Yes, even before the pandemic.

Ioana: Even before, but the pandemic I think was a warning call, and that’s why it changed so much, especially… I have to admit, in the past, at least not as far as I know, Romania did not have these kinds of discussions. Of course, we discussed it among ourselves.

Cosmina: Yes, but there were no such official discussions or public discussions I would say. No one was talking about these things. We all knew that in all law firms, there were long hours, and then lawyers were supposed to work no matter what, during the weekends. If you had work and you had a client, you had to serve the client and there was no limit. But now it’s-

Ioana: Different.

Cosmina: It’s different, I think all over. I don’t know. We can talk about ourselves, but I can see from others that they are also-

Ioana: Also from the clients, I have to-

Cosmina: The clients are educated. It depends, they can be educated, it depends on the approach.

Ioana: I don’t know, in the past everything was urgent.

Cosmina: It depends on the client, of course.

Ioana: It depends on the client, and everything in the past was urgent. Right now, people realize that we are people, and we have our limits. We need to do well. Yes, we work, we have-

Cosmina: Or maybe the clients also got tired.

Ioana: That’s why I’m saying that people realize that everybody, we are all humans. And even in big business, my personal opinion is that irrespective of how big a business is, it’s still conducted by people.

Cosmina: Yes.

Ioana: You have people in there. We are social animals, so this is the idea that we need to understand each other and cooperate with each other. Yes, I think also the clients have changed. It’s not the same approach we used to have in the past.

Lindsay: I completely agree. So, what do you think the future of the legal market will look like?

Ioana: This is a tough one.

Lindsay: I know, predict the future.

Ioana: Yes, Cosmina.

Cosmina: Oh, my God. It would be somehow; I think different I would say. Increasingly different, increasingly challenging, we need to be more digital, even more pragmatic I would say. Because this is a trend that we have started already, and then in the end it will probably be too straightforward. I estimate that it will be like this, I don’t know. I don’t have a crystal globe, but I think it will go even further. It will be less formalistic; this we have already seen. Also, the relationship between the clients and the lawyers. Definitely, it’s more friendly, without being straight to the point, this is the word, I think. And extremely competitive, I would say. In Romania, we are used to the competition. It’s already been competitive, but I think it will be even more competitive.

Ioana: And the generations to come.

Cosmina: Yes.

Ioana: When you ask what the different markets are going to be like, we need to think about what the new clients are going to be like because we are not going to be that new anymore.

Cosmina: The new clients will be like and how the new lawyers will be because it’s both.

Ioana: Yes.

Cosmina: Our teams, because we’re getting old now.

Ioana: You cannot say that Cosmina.

Cosmina: It’s not a problem, but we have to face it. And at the same time, the clients are getting old, so new generations are coming. New generations are completely different, they know what they want compared to us, we didn’t know at all. They know how to sell themselves. They impose a lot of limits. They have precise requirements, and they are…

Ioana: I like it, to be honest, it took us years to even reach their level, you know? Because we had so much access to information, and the good ones really knew what to read and to understand.

Cosmina: The problem is that there are not as many good ones, this is the problem, I would say. Because we don’t want… At least in Romania, we are facing this issue that not too many young people want to go to law school, or at least there was a period during which there were not too many there, and they don’t want to become lawyers. Now I heard that actually there is an increase, there are increased students that would like to go to law school, I heard recently. I don’t know. Which would be good because there would be some diversity.

But on the other hand, there are also a lot that would go to law school, but afterward, they would choose to do something else like business or whatever, or become a judge, or magistrate, and to follow the public career in the public field. So, we are also facing this personal issue because there are fewer and fewer lawyers willing to learn, this is the biggest challenge I think. The ones who are good, they are very good. They are very good, and they are very pragmatic, and they know what they want, they know-

Ioana: They are very focused.

Cosmina: Focused, yes, this is the word, exactly.

Ioana: They are focused, and they want to learn, and they want to grow big. And on the other hand, they don’t want to sacrifice their personal life, which is a big ask if you ask me.

Lindsay: Yes.

Ioana: It took us years to understand it, but they knew it from the start. And they know that they have this work/life balance. For them it’s a no-go, they want to learn, but they want to learn in working hours, and they want to be challenged all the time, so they are not for doing something, these things. And yes, their mind works a little differently. They don’t necessarily have this patience for learning or for these kinds of things because they have access to the information more quickly, and then they want to do things at their pace. And their pace is not similar to the pace that we used to have at their age.

So yes, it’s going to be interesting to see them grow, where they are going to go, to see the clients, where they are going to go, to see the businesses, where they are going to go. Because I know there are big debates regarding Ai and what’s going to happen and so on and so forth. But what nobody’s saying is the fact that the younger generation is not willing to do this repetitive work, which is small work, which is not interesting work. Of course, everybody’s going to say, “Yeah, but the small and repetitive work has its purpose.” Maybe, maybe not, we will see.

Cosmina: It has to a certain extent.

Ioana: I don’t think anything whatever you have to do it in order to become a better lawyer, you necessarily have to send in some forms to the state. So, I think it’s debatable, we need to see how it’s going to go but it’s going to be interesting. For us, we started from the beginning we had all that, the market and do all these things, so we are going to see, it’s not going to be something new. No, I don’t think AI is going to take the place of the younger generations. I think it’s going to be more like a tool to help us because we are going to need help. Things are going to be more complicated, there are going to be more on the digital business, and I think it will be more on this part.

So, it’s up to us whether we are going to adapt or not. It’s about everybody. So, I don’t think it’s something that is going to… Like, from tomorrow I am not going to have a lawyer. Really? I don’t think so. I understand that these topics are really in fashion, that’s okay, we’re still in reality like a pandemic, but I think we should not go there at full speed and consider that this is a bad thing. Yes, we should be careful. Yes, we should consider that this should be in our best interest, not against us.

Because of this, in the end, we are people, and we are collaborating with people. And this is not going to change overnight, and we are not going to keep up. Of course, we did not see each other for two years, everything was locked. But then we had this, we were on all the time on the phones. It was not like I was staying on the phone at home and working on my computer and not talking with anybody. I was all the time in meetings, all the time on the phone with everybody. I was on the phone even more than I am now.

Let’s be honest, it’s not like we’re not going to have our connections and not discuss. This is our strength. We need to stick together and it’s not going to change. Maybe, and if after this pandemic we are willing to see change, to try different things.

Cosmina: Yes, you know Lindsay, you remember last year in Amsterdam it was really amazing how people wanted to talk to each other. I’ve been attending ILN for more than 10 years, but last year it was really maybe one of the best conferences in Amsterdam due to this issue actually, because everyone was eager to talk. No one was bored. Everyone wanted to say something, mingle.

Lindsay: They missed that human connection.

Cosmina: Yes.

Lindsay: Yes, so that’s never going to go away, I agree with you. Even the people who were fine being at home I think had really missed being apart.

Ioana: Yes, definitely, because you need that connection. I think it’s part of who we are. So okay, maybe you are not that social, but you still need human connection.

Lindsay: Absolutely.

Ioana: It doesn’t mean that you don’t enjoy all the big parties, but still you are going to some parties, you still have your friends and family and so on and so forth. This is part of who we are, and we cannot expect a future so different from this perspective. Yes, the concepts are going to be more mathematical, and they are going to go even further, and they are maybe even going to challenge the fundamentals that we have, and they are going to think about these two things. But that’s natural, that’s good. If we did not have that we would not be, or never would go-

Cosmina: No evolution.

Ioana: Yes, no rockets, no satellites, no going to Mars, no anything. So, I think it’s natural. And also, some reactions that we are scared of, yes, it’s also natural but it’s part of the growth. We cannot say that growing is something that is comfortable, it’s like the opposite.

Lindsay: Absolutely.

Ioana: But it’s going to be definitely interesting.

Lindsay: Absolutely. So, to wrap up I always like to ask, what is one thing that you’re enjoying right now that has nothing to do with work?

Ioana: Right now, right now?

Lindsay: It doesn’t have to be right this very second, but in general in your life.

Ioana: Oh, there are many things Lindsay.

Cosmina: Oh, in my life, yes. They are… Can I answer?

Ioana: Yes, of course.

Cosmina: We are at the point, both of us, somehow, because we are also friends, so we know each other when we are trying to understand who we are for real and do what we want to do for the future. This is interesting, because we started this prov some years ago, but now we are… Last year was quite an important year, I don’t know why. Now we are continuing this search somehow for who we are, and what we want to do. Which is interesting. You can add…

Ioana: I totally agree with you. So, the past years, it’s like, one to evolve. At some point, you need to stop and ask yourself where you are going and what you are doing, and we are not talking professionally, we are talking human beings. What we like, what we could improve, what could we try new? Did I really enjoy that, or did I just because it was fashionable? Yes. So yes, last year was an introspection year, and this year is more like let’s put up the business and move forward. Assuming the result that you get last year, it’s like, this year I’m going to be acknowledging that I am like this, and let’s see what we can do from this. Yes. They were very interesting years from this perspective, I have to admit. It was nice, and it is nice. Because you take life differently now.

Lindsay: Yes.

Ioana: In the past, everything was a tragedy and drama and fun-

Cosmina: We lived through a lot of dramas to get here.

Ioana: Yes.

Cosmina: Professionally rather than… But now there are not so many dramas.

Ioana: Yes, because life is like what I can do more to be happy.

Lindsay: I like that.

Ioana: And the focus changed a lot. And it helps when you’re not that focused on eternal, and we are more focused on internal and internal life. And as long as you’re okay, I think it’s okay also around you. Yes. It is rather interesting. We have so many books read on psychology about those things. Personal development is our project.

Lindsay: I love that, that’s really good.

Ioana: That’s it, we’re all done.

Lindsay: That’s really cool.

Ioana: Yes.

Lindsay: I love that you’re doing that together.

Ioana: You’re welcome.

Lindsay: I might join in. I need it.

Cosmina: Everybody needs it, I think.

Lindsay: Oh, I think you’re right.

Cosmina: It’s a lot of fun because like I said, it’s no more drama. Here, it’s all acceptance. We don’t have a problem, all of them we say, “Okay, why do you have so many people gasping around us?” Because we’re like this, so natural.

Ioana: Yes, you need to accept who you are actually, I think, and to… Understatement, I think.

Lindsay: That’s very cool.

Ioana: For your actions, yes.

Lindsay: I love that.

Ioana: But we have not changed, this is clear. The character cannot change a lot.

Lindsay: Of course, well that’s part of the acceptance.

Cosmina: Yes, but you know, it’s so great to see people that they’re doing it rather quickly than we are. Without getting too many dramas on the way.

Lindsay: Yes.

Ioana: Yes, maybe they have had enough time to do it, we have a lot of extra hours.

Cosmina: Yes, definitely. In the past years, we have had to do it a lot.

Ioana: Yes. But it’s better to do it even later than never, I think.

Lindsay: That’s right. There’s no time like the present, as they say.

Cosmina: No, I like the present, that’s why the questions about the future for me are, make me like the ending of a story. Okay, I’m going to tell you how it is, but everything can change in an instant over the years, so okay. But in fact, I think it’s more important every moment and every day to be the best that you can be and move from there.

Lindsay: Absolutely.

Cosmina: Because really nothing is certain in this world. And we are somehow lucky, and we should enjoy the things that we have. It took us some time to realize.

Lindsay: That’s great. Well, thank you both so much for joining us this week. I really appreciate it; this has been a great conversation.

Cosmina: Thank you, Lindsay.

Ioana: Thank you for the invitation. It was very nice talking to you.

Cosmina: Yes.

Lindsay: And thank you so much to our listeners as well. We’ll be back next week with another guest, and in the meantime, please take a moment to rate, review and subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you very much.

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Advanced LinkedIn Strategies

Defining Relationship Marketing

Why Should Modern Lawyers Embrace Relationship Marketing?

Getting Started with Strategic Relationship Marketing

1990s: “Business Card” Era

Early 2000s: “Brochureware” Boom

Mid-2000s: “SEO Spell” Era

Late 2000s: “Social” generation

Early 2010s: “Content King” Reigns

Early 2020s: “Virtual Voyage” Adventure

Mid-2020s: “AI” Era