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Law Firm ILN-telligence Podcast | Brendah Mpanga, BNM Advocates

Brendah Mpanga is the founding partner of BNM Advocates in Kampala, Uganda, which is also one of the ILN member firms. In this episode, Brendah and Lindsay delve into the economic impacts of multiple pandemics, the diligence required for business development, and Brendah’s passion project.

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 with the International Lawyers Network. Our guest this week is one of our returning guests, Brendah Mpanga from BNM Advocates in Kampala, Uganda. Brendah, welcome back. We’re so happy to have you back with us, and thanks for joining us again. For those of our listeners who haven’t had the pleasure of listening to your last podcast, why don’t you tell them a little bit about yourself and your practice?

Brendah: Thank you, Lindsay. Thank you very much for having me. Good afternoon, good evening, good morning, wherever you are based. I’m very happy to be here. It’s afternoon in Kampala, bright and sunny. We thank God for that. Good afternoon everyone. About me, my name is Brendah Mpanga like Lindsay have said. I am the founder and managing partner of BNM Advocates. Female led and largely female law practice based in the heart of Kampala. We serve corporate clients both within Uganda, Africa and the rest of the world. We are happy to be here. We’ve been in the Ugandan market for seven years now.

Lindsay: That’s right. You just celebrated an anniversary on the 1st of March, right?

Brendah: Yes. We are happy to have been in the market for that period of time. As perhaps you could know that very many businesses that start up, especially in Africa, don’t live beyond their third year. So, we are happy that we are not part of that statistic and happy to be moving forward, growing and hoping for big and better things.

Lindsay: Congratulations, that’s exciting.

Brendah: Thank you very much.

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

Brendah: Yes, one of the biggest challenges and I believe it’s a challenge that every lawyer in practice faces is business development, growing the client base. That is something that no one tells you about at law school. And then you start up this business and it is the largest part of the work that you are supposed to do. There’s no science to eat. There’s no book that will teach you how to do it, but you need to set apart time to do that. So that is one of our biggest challenges. And I think being where we are currently in Uganda, the economy is not helping. Last year we had an Ebola outbreak and inflation, I think in Q1, Q2, and part of Q3. So, all those things lumped up together do not help the fact that you’re trying to look for this client, to grow your client portfolio. So that’s one of the biggest challenges that we are currently facing.

Lindsay: Yes, absolutely. That is a challenge. So how are you facing that?

Brendah: Yes, again like I’ve said, there’s no science to business development. You just need to be deliberate about it. And what I have done as managing partner is to structure my time, my week. I must make sure that 50% of that time is set apart for business development. I have also encouraged the team. We’ve produced a reward and recognition policy where if you engage in business development and there are fruits therein, you will be rewarded and recognized for that. I think that has helped a lot, internally, we are doing that. Then externally of course, we are happy to be part of the ILN family. That move first of all has increased our credibility.

Our brand has improved visibility. The fact that we are part of a family of lawyers spread all over the globe, where we can be able to tap into a legal skill that we may not have in-house. This is very useful in terms of being able to have the potential and ability to engage even with clients with whom we don’t have the particular skill in-house. We believe that we are able to tap into the ILN family. So, we are kind of sort of a global law firm right now as you see it. And we are happy for that because right now when we are engaging with our clients, we also talk about ILN and the fact that if there’s anything that they have that we might not have in-house, we should be able to provide the service. And I think with that we will be able to see some growth and expansion in terms of our client base.

Lindsay: That’s great. So, you’ve already talked about the current state of the market in Uganda. Talk to me a little bit about what that has meant for your clients.

Brendah: Lindsay, as you might know, we had… Of course, COVID was not yesterday, but the impact of COVID is still very alive in everybody’s mind and business. And when we had that outbreak last year of Ebola and then inflation, which I believe is something that trickled around Africa and the rest of the world, those negative attributes kind of shocked the economy. And what that means is that people withhold, they’re not ready to spend. They would rather hold onto the finances that they have. And maybe postponed any activity that they may have in terms of legal and other services that they may require. And because of that, you’ll find that the economy becomes slower, business partnerships becomes slower, everything becomes slower because of that. But currently, I must say that coming out of a very bad inflation, currently the inflation is about 9.4%. It was about 10.3% last year in October.

When I looked at the stats, I think it’s about 9.4%, which shows that there’s a slight improvement. Currently, what that means is that there’s beginning to get a sense of business beginning to pick up. It’s just the beginning of the year as well. We are hopeful that the outlook will be different. We are entering into Q2, and also from a government perspective there’s a lot of wanting to finish all the projects that were planned within the fiscal year, preceding the reading of the budget which would be in 30th of June this year. So, because of that you’ll find that all the projects that had been planned for the year, those that are involved are trying to finish them within this period of time. And the ripple effect of that means that there could be some business coming through for the lawyers and other service providers.

Lindsay: That’s great. That’ll really help. Absolutely.

Brendah: I hope so too.

Lindsay: Yes, certainly. So, switching gears a little bit, what would you say is the biggest area that’s related to your practice or industry that you’re curious about and why?

Brendah: I think largely I have been curious about corporate governance. I mentioned when I started speaking that very many businesses do not live beyond the third year of their existence. I don’t know how it is there. But here that’s a very, very huge problem. Very many SMEs and startups collapse after the third… They don’t go beyond the fifth year. And part of the reason is because of lack of proper governance frameworks in terms of good governance, the leadership, separation of roles, reporting lines, decision making. The very many family businesses, for example, make decisions over the dining table. I know, yes, there have been businesses that have been successful who make decisions at the dining table.

But again, because of the lack of separation of family and business, very many businesses have been collapsing. What we are now doing at the firm is when we get a client, even if they’ve in instructed us on something different, we try and make sure that we watch the corporate governance side of things to make sure that they have the right governance frameworks in place. Is the board the right one? Do they have the right skills and expertise? Do they make the decisions that they’re supposed to make? How often do they make these decisions? Are they different from management? So we give that as a piece to the businesses that we work for as a value add service, to ensure that the business side of things is enabled in a better governed way to make sure that everything moves smoothly.

But as we were going on that journey recently, we encountered some cases with a client, a local NGO, that is trying to revoke guardianship orders for children that were illegally adopted out of Uganda. And when we started doing the applications, taking them to court and seeking revocation of those illegal orders, we decided to take a step back and look at the underlying reasons. And what is common in all these cases is that there’s a family at the end of it, that the mother is illiterate. Perhaps they’re separated with the father and a single mother whose children are taken away. And we want to conduct research in that area, want to understand what kind of protection is given to such vulnerable families.

We have an Illiterate Protections Act, which gives certain criteria that one is supposed to follow in the case of when such a person goes to court. You must make sure that they understand, whatever they’re signing should be read to them in a language they understand. And we’re beginning to question some of those things. But also, the wider societal attitudes, because I remember there’s one application we went to court and the judge was saying, “But these kids are studying in the Netherlands. The mother lives in the village here. Why don’t you leave them to study in the Netherlands? They’re happier there.” And I was shocked by that phrase because my understanding is that the parent has a constitutional right for them to exercise their rights as a parent to this child. And therefore, it’s a human right for them to be able to live with their child.

So, I was shocked to hear that the judge was making such a comment, and for me, he was already biased and wouldn’t give us justice. So, we are putting together a team to do wider research on that area. It is going to change the status quo in terms of legislation and also societal attitudes, children in general. And hoping that it’ll be able to introduce some new guidelines in terms of how you treat such cases for children. So, I found it quite intriguing. But more so, when we started looking at the issues we found that they’re actually very many… The trend is the same in almost all the cases. There’s a single mother who is illiterate, who has no money, who has no job, and then the children are taken away. Very same cases, very similar circumstances. So, we want to take some time and look at it, and hopefully we’ll be able to create some impact around that and also cause some legislative change. So, I’m excited about that.

Lindsay: Yes, that sounds like a real passion project and something that’s really worthwhile. And I wonder too, because as you say that the mothers who are losing their children in this case are illiterate, if there’s even an awareness on their part of the rights that they have to their children because they may not know. So, I think the work that you’re doing there is really important.

Lindsay: Okay, so let’s move on to telling us something interesting about yourself that most people don’t know.

Brendah: I have a large phobia for water.

Lindsay: Oh, wow.

Brendah: Yes. I cannot do a boat anywhere. My husband keeps teasing me and saying that I fear water even in a wash basin. Yeah, I don’t know where that came from, but I just can’t. And some friends of mine were telling me recently that you need to get over that fear, and just plan a date and take a boat ride to an island somewhere. But even just the idea of thinking about it, ooh is… Yes, so any advice on that, I would be grateful.

Lindsay: I understand because I have a very bad fear of heights. So anytime someone talks to me about having a very bad fear of something, as long as it’s not really interfering with your life, I tend to be very empathetic. So, it’s one of those things where even if I don’t really understand the fear, I have a similar fear. So, I think, well, if it’s not interfering with your life, just go with it.

Brendah: But you do fly, don’t you?

Lindsay: It’s so funny flying does not bother me. It’s just being up high otherwise. I’m fine with flying, it’s everything else.

Brendah: Oh, wow.

Lindsay: I just can’t go up high anywhere else. I know it’s really funny.

Lindsay: And people have said the same thing to me about I have to get over it. I just can’t. It’s gotten worse as I’ve gotten older.

Brendah: So, you can’t do bungee jumping. You can’t-

Lindsay: No. Oh god, no. It makes my palm sweat just to think about it. Boats are fine though. I can do boats. No bungee jumping.

Brendah: Yes.

Lindsay: Yes. Now I’m feeling a little sweaty.

Brendah: Yes, sorry about that. That’s fine.

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

Brendah: Oh well, biggest mentor, that’s a difficult one. I think I’ve learnt a number of things from different people. But I think my last boss when I was employed in the corporate world, from there I learned from her, she kept saying, “You are as good as your last assignment.” So, preparation, preparation is key. Preparation will give you the confidence that you’ll need. It gives you self-esteem, it will give you winning that you’re looking for anything. So that was a powerful lesson.

Lindsay: That’s great. I really like that. And what’s the most important lesson you’ve learned over your career?

Brendah: There are always two sides to something. Even when we are providing advice, especially in terms of litigation, as you are trying to understand your client’s case it’s important to understand the opposite counsel’s case, the other party’s case. And sometimes when you look at it, you’d find that there’s a divergent point where whatever is taking you to court started from. So don’t be quick to judge, take a step [inaudible] all the information. And sometimes it is important that clients want quick answers, quick responses, but sometimes it is important to get all the information both for your case and to understand the other person’s case. Otherwise, you’d get surprises.

Lindsay: Yes, and especially in the field of litigation you don’t want surprises, or I suppose in any part of the law it’s not great to have surprises.

Brendah: No. Oh, it’s a very bad place to be.

Lindsay: That’s true. What would you say most people misunderstand about your field of work?

Brendah: Here in Uganda very many people look at lawyers as you are expensive, you just want to take money away from me. So, they look at having a lawyer on a transaction as a secondary issue. They don’t pay much attention to it. They’re always running after the money. And what I realize is that people come to us when things have gone bad. They’ve entered into a partnership or a deal that they can’t carefully walk out of or very quickly walk out of because their hands are tied. And when you ask certain questions, they say, “I didn’t think that was important. I didn’t think I needed a lawyer in the beginning.”

And sometimes they actually lose a lot of money. So, it is a myth that I think needs to be broken. The problem is I don’t know who is going to do that work for us. But yes, many people think lawyers are expensive and they’re just a total waste of time. They just come and say so many words and then send you a fee note. But that’s not the case.

Lindsay: And I think too, your point earlier about the work that you’re doing with corporate governance advice is so important. And I think lawyers do end up being very expensive if you don’t bring them in early on, because if you’re there to fix problems, then that’s going to be much more expensive than if you’re there in the beginning to prevent problems.

Brendah: Exactly.

Lindsay: Yes, can you tell me about a client that changed your practice?

Brendah: I think I’ve actually talked about that. I went off and talked about that NGO with which we are working. I’ve always looked at myself as a corporate lawyer, look at a transaction, look at due diligence. A new company wants to enter into the market, and I’ll get onto the assignment. But after doing that work that I’ve just spoken about for that NGO, it’s not entirely going to change my practice. But that made me feel that I need to empathize more with people. Of course, as low as it’s important for us to empathize, but again remain professional as we provide the advice. But that helped me to think beyond the application that I’m filing in court. I am filing an application for a revocation of a guardianship order or an adoption order, an international adoption order for each child that was taken let’s say to Greece.

But beyond that, there are other extraneous factors that are very important in terms of this story. And I always take now the time to get the whole picture and look at the story. Sometimes I’ve also noticed that a client comes to you with a particular problem, but when you dig deeper you find that there there’s a pattern perhaps either historically, or chronologically, or in their relationships that you need to pay attention to. Let’s say for example, in the way that you engage with them, in the way that you respond to them, in the way that you provide the advice. You might find that there are other facets to the story. So, while I am looking at this client in front of me, I now take an extra step to try and look behind this person. Is there anything else that I need to pay attention to as I engage with his lawyers?

It sounds a little old school, but it is more wholesome. And you add more value as a lawyer to an individual when they come to you and then you look. And sometimes we give more beyond being lawyers, sometimes you just have to sit and listen. Sometimes someone just needs… We have clients who come to us, and they just need someone to first talk to. As I was telling someone in the office the other day that sometimes I feel like a counselor, and I need perhaps to charge for that. But then you realize that when you talk to someone, they actually feel better. So, I find that quite gratifying. And whenever I’m able to do that, I take off the time. I can give an example, we have a client who has a lot of business, but again, his business has very many cases in court of debt, lack of payment. He missed his obligations in contract, let’s say construction contract went bad. And there are so many and it’s so disruptive. So, I recall that I sat down with him I think about two weeks ago.

I just wanted to talk to you and understand why are you in this position? And then tell me more about your family, your background. And my goodness, when we finally… We had almost like a three-hour discussion, and what came out is that there were other societal social issues that were the reason he was in that position. And I said, no, we need to organize your business. We need to get out of court because it’s very disruptive. You’re not moving forward. You have to pay damages and penalties and da, da, da. So, I find that as lawyers, yes, we bill for time, but sometimes if you’re looking at adding value to someone, it is important to understand all the sides of the coin. Take time.

Lindsay: And that’s business development too.

Brendah: Yes, exactly.

Lindsay: Absolutely.

Brendah: Yes.

Lindsay: That’s really great. So, to wrap up, can you tell me one thing that you’ve got going on right now that you’re really enjoying that has nothing to do with work?

Brendah: Oh God, what is that?

Lindsay: I know.

Brendah: I found some nice YouTube videos on yoga with very good calming music. When I’m not going to the gym or I’m not running, I do that. And oh, my goodness, it is so refreshing. I feel the blood flowing in my veins when I go to bed.

Lindsay: That’s great. I love that.

Brendah: Yes. So that’s my new-found love, I’ve done it for the last two weeks and I’ve really, really enjoyed it. And I don’t intend to stop.

Lindsay: Good, glad to hear it. That sounds wonderful. Well, excuse me. Thank you so much, Brendah. This was a real pleasure. I highly appreciate it. And thank you so much to all of our listeners. We’ll be back next week with another guest, and please take a moment to rate, review, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you so much.

Brendah: Thank you very much.

Client Centricity in Practice – Part Two

Last week, we brought you part one of our session from Rio, “Client Centricity in Practice,” moderated by Melissa Kanô and Alexandre Pessoa of KLA Advogados, who were joined by Waldemar Thiago Junior, Vice President, Managing Director of Brazil for General Mills.

There were so many fantastic takeaways that I wanted to give you all the chance to sit with the first part before I brought you the second section. So here we go!

How much importance do in-house teams give to social media when it comes to their outside counsel?

Waldemar pointed out that he believes that it’s important – not to him because he comes from the generation that will call people to talk about things – but for the next generation, because they are all on social media. He does use social media to search for talent, particularly LinkedIn, and said that LinkedIn is probably the best place to invest in. He suggested that firms work with agencies that have social media expertise. That being said, based on some feedback from the audience, everyone agreed that this has to be done in such a way that is ethical and where permitted since not every jurisdiction allows the use of social media. In those countries, then, word-of-mouth is the only option.

However, when it is possible to use social media, then it should be employed because as Waldemar pointed out, the next CEOs and directors will use it much better.

How much do they take into account a firm’s diversity, equity, and inclusion policy when working with them?

General Mills, Brazil has been ranked number six as a “Great Place to Work” with respect to race and ethnic care, so it’s something that as a company, they value a lot and they are honored to hold such a high rank. They work to create a lot of awareness, discussion, and education within the company to guarantee that their employees take it seriously. As an example, although Waldemar didn’t require it, he has started to see his sourcing team include those questions on the questionnaires for new suppliers.

But they are just at the beginning of this, though he believes it will be happening more broadly, especially for big companies. Waldemar mentioned a friend who works in the private equity sector, where it is happening regularly and those companies are also requiring statistics. One of the Chilean delegates mentioned that in his country, national companies are required to hit certain percentages because of national and foreign policy. He asked whether that was similar for Brazil.

Waldemar answered that for General Mills, one of the pillars of their global strategy is to be a force for good, which means taking care of the planet, the people, and the communities. With that, comes the expectation that the company will have a positive influence on the things they believe need to change in society – not so much lobbying, but more leading by example.

One of these things is regenerative agriculture, to protect the environment – the idea is not only to protect but also to bring carbon back to the soil that was removed because of bad agricultural practices, pollution, etc. They do this by having scientists who specialize in regenerative agriculture, develop tools and technology for the main crops that General Mills sources from around the globe. They then share that knowledge widely instead of keeping it to themselves – they could use it as a competitive advantage, but they don’t, because they believe it’s important for society.

They do the same with diversity and inclusion. In Brazil, General Mills is part of the movement for racial equity. One of the key pillars of that movement, which has more than 47 of the biggest companies in Brazil from all sectors, is to change society, to guarantee that they provide education, to provide real chances. They measure growth year after year how many positions they create for Black people, and how many leadership positions.

As a note, in Brazil. 56% of the population is Black. But at Sao Paulo University, which is considered the best university in Brazil, only 1.2% of the professors are Black – one example. Waldemar noted that the level of inequality in Brazil is terrible. But of course, that’s not only the case in Brazil, citing the racial makeup of the delegates in the room. However, change is coming and not only will it be good for business, but it will be good for society.

What is the process for choosing outside counsel and how involved are the General Mills Headquarters?

At General Mills Brazil, it’s led by the legal teams at General Mills headquarters. Waldemar noted that the legal team in Brazil has a dotted line to him, but a straight line of report to headquarters. So they make the decision and because he has a good relationship with them, they may ask him, but it’s informal – the decision-making is theirs.

For local companies, public companies, the CEO has a right to approve the legal firm that the company will hire because these are all experienced people who run into so many issues in their lives.

Waldemar said he is coming to know a lot more about the different specializations of law firms, and sometimes he can offer an opinion on them, but local businesses have their CEOs and CFOs involved (often because of tax issues), and they will make the decision.

What is your impression of labor claims in Brazil?

One of the moderators included Alexandre Pessoa, from KLA, who is a labor lawyer, so he asked Waldemar to speak specifically about the labor claims in Brazil. He shared that in 2017, there were 4.2 million labor claims filed against employers in the country. They have a very specific and litigious environment, so he wanted to get the perspective of the employer.

Waldemar agreed that it’s a nightmare, especially when you are dealing with so much transformation, such as plant closures, distribution center closures/moves, etc. As an example, he said they have just announced that they’re moving their second-largest plant from one state in the south of Brazil to a state in the east, which is more strategically located. That involves terminating more than 700 people, which amounts to 700 risks. They have learned best practices from the past, so they are more confident now – first, they are treating people well, and second, they are legally very strong on the way they decided to do it.

The problem is that many companies don’t treat their employees well, and so as a result, employers suffer from the environment that they live in.

Alexandre agreed and said that his experience has been the same on the lawyer’s side, defending companies in a country with a protective bias for employees. He added that it’s not even about paying employees extra, but sometimes a polite conversation may prevent litigation. Even for a highly skilled professional in a senior position at a company, the simple signature of a release agreement will not prevent a labor claim.

Thanks so much to Waldemar, Melissa, Alexandre and all of our delegates for a fantastic interactive session in Brazil!

Law Firm ILN-telligence Podcast | Pierre Hurt, Lutgen & Associés

Pierre Hurt is the managing partner of Lutgen & Associés, a firm focused on litigation support and legal counseling, and a member of the International Lawyers Network. In this episode, we welcome Pierre back to talk about the challenges of managing a firm and maintaining IT security, understanding that the law comes last when working with clients, and more challenges of running a modern law firm.

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, with the International Lawyers Network.

Our guest this week is Pierre Hurt with Lutgen & Associés in Luxembourg. Pierre, we’re so glad to have you with us this week. Thank you so much for joining us. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself and your firm and your practice?

Pierre: Dear Lindsay, thank you for having me. So yes, about myself, I don’t know if there are many things to say about myself. I am now the managing partner of Lutgen & Associés. I have been in that function for two years I think, or three years, I can’t remember right now. So, we are a little litigation firm in Luxembourg. Nowadays, we are nine lawyers. So, we’re still quite a small structure, but we are a small law firm with big cases. So, we often have multinational companies as clients or big public entities from Luxembourg or even from the US or from other countries. So, we are a very good company on the one hand and still remain a boutique law firm, which we always wanted to remain. And so, we are three partners for the moment, which might change in the immediate future because we have very good young people working with us who have a really bright professional future in front of them.

And we really want to have them at the next meetings of the ILN, or at least some of them, in order that you meet them because they are nice, funny, and intelligent people. So, we are developing, but we are developing slowly. And I think for a law firm in Luxembourg it’s difficult. It would be difficult if that were our intention to develop quickly because you can’t find the people. There are not enough talented people in the labor market, and they are taken away, grabbed away from the market very, very fast. So, it’s difficult to grow, but it’s possible. It’s a long-term issue unless you buy the practice from another law firm and that’s of course always a possibility.

Lindsay: Yes, the labor shortage is a challenge that firms are facing the world over and not just law firms. I think that’s a professional challenge that a lot of companies are facing. So slow growth I think is the way to go. And when you are a smaller firm like yours, the chemistry that you have with your colleagues is very important. So, I’m sure that’s something that you care about deeply as well.

Pierre: We feel a little bit like a family business. So, we are not a family business because family businesses in law firms are not really the best situation you can have, in my opinion. They exist of course, but we feel like a family, and we are quite close to one another. And so, we have a very, how do you say, warm relationship with each other. And we would like to keep that as much as possible.

Lindsay: That’s great. So, what would you say then is one of your biggest challenges at the moment and how are you working to overcome that?

Pierre: The biggest challenge definitely for us at this point in time is an entrepreneurial challenge. So is the question of the organization of the law firm. So, we are in a certain way a traditional law firm, but we have to adapt to the new challenges, to the new risks, especially of our time. And the risks because there are multiple risks. And I would say that the major risks obviously are money laundering risks. So, you have to be set up in order to be able to fight money laundering properly. And Luxembourg authorities, they have become very strict on this. So, lawyers are cooperating really seriously, in my opinion, with the authorities. We are not joking at all anymore on those questions. So, we have to be organized under this, on this topic.

Then another very important topic is data protection, which is also… So, data protection is to be implemented in the law firm, we have the EU regulation on data protection that you don’t have in the United States, but here it’s also a very serious subject matter. And behind the data protection issue is really the IT security issue. Which in my opinion is even more important because if you are hacked, your data is out and then you are in breach of data protection. But the security issue, technical security is, in my opinion, the most important one. And I would even say it’s maybe the biggest risk for a law firm today is data protection.

You still have the responsibility of the lawyers of the law firm if they make a professional mistake, but you can ensure that and the insurance we are quite used to. So, these are old mechanisms where we are used to but, IT security. I must say we are working a lot on that these days and I am really struck by the lack of transparency of the service providers. And because, if you want to find out, for instance, I give an example, which are the exact conditions or rules applicable to a cloud service of Microsoft? You will not find that on the internet. You will find thousands of things but not the information you are looking for.

And we have two IT firms working for us. We have a firm that does basic IT services and then we have an IT security firm that specializes really in IT security. And none of them are able to provide us with the documentation. Which is really, it makes me sick because as a lawyer of course we want to respect the rules. We want to respect the general regulation on data protection, but if you want to get the right information, you can’t find it. So, it is really a huge challenge for us to be compliant from that perspective. And in a certain number of years, I guess things will get better, but at this point in time it’s still, well it’s really obscure, the lack of transparency. Which strikes me.

Lindsay: I totally agree with you. And I think it’s one of those things where law firms have become more businesses and less focused on just the practice of law, which I think has really been the shift over the last decade. These things have really become a concern and firms have become the target of hackers and have moved past just advising their clients on how to deal with these issues and data breaches and those types of things. And so, you want to be confident that your data as a firm is secure and it’s difficult, as you say when there is a lack of transparency to be confident that is the case. And so, you want to be able to trust the service providers that you’re working with. But when you can’t delegate that information, that’s really difficult as a business owner.

Pierre: It is. IT firms are quite competent on technical issues, but they are not capable to advise on regulatory issues. And what they don’t understand is that the regulatory issue is as important as the technical one. Because if you have a problem in the country where your data is, and if this is a problematic jurisdiction or a jurisdiction where lawyers are very expensive for instance, it can become a huge issue. And as lawyers, we have already defended lawyers who had the data in Luxembourg and where the Luxembourg police were house searching the service in Luxembourg of foreign law firms. So, they did not go to the foreign country where the lawyers were, but they came to Luxembourg to the data center. And all the proceedings had to be done in Luxembourg. And well, Luxembourg lawyers are not as expensive as now British lawyers or American lawyers. So, this is also a real issue. And then we have just the data protection issue. The data must remain in EU jurisdictions. And what happens with the data in the US is not very clear.

Lindsay: We’re not clear on that either. And what’s interesting here is that it varies from state to state. And there are some states that are following the GDPR and some… We’re hoping that we’re going to get a little more clarity on that. And then for some of us who are operating global businesses like the ILN, we already have to follow GDPR because we have international data. We’re not very clear on it either.

Pierre: It’s worse. The whole situation.

Lindsay: It’s very stressful. We agree with you.

Pierre: No, it’s very… But the big part, I think if you have bigger law firms, they maybe have done that already. But for smaller firms like my firm, we still have to ramp up a little better with all those issues. And yes, I do not want to say that we are very bad at them now because, as I said, we have two service providers and one specific security service provider, which is not bad at all. There are many that don’t have such providers. So, we have been pen tested, that’s sort of a penetration test where your service provider tries to hack your server in order to see if it is secure. So, we did all that, but still.

Lindsay: I know it’s stressful. That’s very stressful.

Pierre: Lawyers are ignorant normally, or a lawyer like I am, on IT issues. We do everything as lawyers, but I must say IT is really tough for us.

Lindsay: Well, your role is supposed to focus on the law and not on IT.

Pierre: That is when you begin as a lawyer, you think this. And when you get more mature and experienced you realize that the most important part is not the law but the facts. And so, you always have to understand the business of your client and you must know what happened. And so, you have to specialize in various subject methods in order to understand what happened. And the law comes afterward, later on.

Lindsay: That’s true. That’s true. Well, on that note, can you talk to us about the current state of the market and what that means for you and your clients?

Pierre: Well, this is a little bit more difficult question for me because, for us, the market is the clients that come to us. So, we are not focusing on the market in order to see new opportunities, but we are waiting longer for the clients to come to us. And then of course we select them, we do not take all the cases. Really not. On the contrary, the opposite is true. So often our difficulty is getting rid of clients we do not want. In order to be focused on the segments of clients we are looking for and which are corporations. So more important, bigger clients, we are not working for small companies or for private people. There are exceptions of course. So, we have defined a sort of segment of clients and then we select from among the clients coming to us potential clients, we select the ones which fit in with our business model.

Lindsay: That’s a good position to be in.

Pierre: So, it is, yes. But I tell you, it can be anything that arrives. This morning I had a social security case. I do not know if we will do it, but just to tell you, we could do it. I had a freedom of speech case, which I will do because it’s for a regular client, a new freedom of speech case. I’m currently working on a big case of sales of steel between, an international sale of steel litigation. And then other times portfolio management goes wrong or something, an insurance aspect. Depends, what we do as litigators, you do not everything, but almost everything. We are very abiding.

Lindsay: That does mean no day is the same and it must keep it from getting boring at all.

Pierre: Yes, and you have all these surprises.

Lindsay: Yes, which is good and bad.

Pierre: Bad, yes. You never can really plan your day, which is of course. And then the worst surprise is when you arrive in the morning, you have a plan on Monday morning or Tuesday morning, you have a plan for the week and then you have a phone call from a client who says, “I have a house search from the police. They are in all the premises in our local different locations.” And then you must mobilize 5, 6, 7 lawyers immediately in order to go to different places. And you are in a huge mess for days before being able to return to your home base.

Lindsay: So best not to have too firm of a plan for the week is what you’re saying.

Pierre: Not always. Yes, remain flexible. Yes.

Lindsay: That’s really the quality you need to be a good player, remain flexible.

Pierre: Yes. Always anticipate. Now the thing is, lawyers, what is very interesting in lawyers, they are a little bit like priests or ancient oracles. Because clients want you to predict the future. What is going to happen? What will the judge do? Or how will this go? How will my transaction evolve? So, they want you to make predictions about the future. And in fact, you are making predictions on the future, and you are making predictions on your own organization of your work. And it is on a very regular basis that everything goes wrong. That is how it is, that’s life. Yes. That’s the profession.

Lindsay: Yes, absolutely. So, sort of along those lines, but not really just lawyers, but what do you think great business leaders have in common?

Pierre: What do great business leaders have in common?

Lindsay: Yes.

Pierre: Well, I think maybe just what I said, to be able to deal with the unpredictable and the unknown. So, to have this also ancient virtue of prudence, to be able to navigate in a stormy sea without knowing what the day after will be exactly. So, you have to plan in an uncertain world, the contingency, I think is the right word. In French will be “contingence”. The contingency of human existence to navigate through that. That was maybe the most important for a decision-maker. Also, for a politician. If you look at the pandemic when you may have to make decisions about the virus, which you don’t understand. That is typical for the contingency of life, and which makes good decision makers to make the good, the right decisions in such a situation.

Lindsay: Maybe that’s why there are so many lawyers in politics.

Pierre: Yes, but that’s also because they love to speak.

Lindsay: That too.

Pierre: But true, yes.

Lindsay: So, do you think that it’s possible for there to be a work-life balance as a lawyer?

Pierre: That is the biggest challenge of our time, truly speaking. Because I would say that the job of a lawyer has become more complex because of the new risks that have appeared and the new obligations that you have. Be it AML, be it security. So, there are more risks. Also, legal risks on the one hand, and on the other hand, lawyers in the past, the famous lawyers, they have always been men. And they had for sure very good and strong wives that supported them. And now we are in a situation where our spouses are in similar situations to us as lawyers, or they are even lawyers. And so, it becomes almost impossible, I find if you have children if you are both working, to go on doing the job.

And the difficulty is really, well… So, you have to, you must change your organization. And that is the difficulty. How to organize in order to still make it possible to be a lawyer in a modern society. And that is really, for us, we are thinking a lot about it. We are discussing a lot about it as fathers. The fathers in my law firm take afternoons off in order to be with their children.

But it’s true that still in this situation, it remains difficult. So, to find the right organization I also think that it’s a question of time. Maybe in 20, 30 years it will be easier, I don’t know. And then I also heard from the ILN meetings we had already, that in certain jurisdictions like in Norway, I remember they have already changed their organization more than we did here on in our countries.

And that’s why I like the ILN. One of the reasons is to have those discussions and to hear what is happening in other countries. And I remember that somebody told us that if you would not take your off time for your children in Norway, your colleagues, would really look after you. Well, they would really not appreciate that if you did not take your child time. And we have not arrived there yet.

Lindsay: We haven’t either. That’s not the case in the US for sure. Definitely not. That’s really interesting to hear. I hadn’t heard that about Norway. And I hope that we get that way here in the US at some point too. That would be great.

Pierre: It would be a very good subject matter also for one of our conferences. How to organize to be a law firm in a modern society, which must be adapted to the individuals. It’s not possible anymore, in my opinion, to have those vertical organizations where you have orders coming from the top and where everybody is treated the same way. Because people, if they are in different situations, you cannot treat them the same way if you want to be fair. So, you must adapt. I have colleagues who have quite some children at home and who are brilliant. So, you want to keep them. You want them to feel secure at their job. You want them to feel good at their job. You want to have them with you. But of course, they cannot work the same time they worked before when they didn’t have children. So, you cannot say like in the big law firms, everybody has to invoice seven hours per day. I mean, come on.

Lindsay: Right.

Pierre: It’s impossible.

Lindsay: And at the same time, you don’t want the burden to have to fall on single people with no children because then they’ll end up being resentful of people who have children. So that’s the flip side. So, that is a great discussion for a conference to see whether there is somewhere in the world that’s figured it out. I don’t know if there is, but just to see collectively what people can come up with.

Pierre: Yes, how everybody a little bit deals with the subject matter. But we also always say it’s no problem if you work less, when you work less, you earn less. So, it’s on everybody who has to make the decision for himself. But again, for lawyers, it’s difficult to anticipate the quantity of work you will have because one case can change everything in a minute.

Lindsay: That’s true. As you say, you are only oracles to a point.

Pierre: Yes. And I guess that even antique oracles make mistakes.

Lindsay: Yes, sometimes lawyers make mistakes when predicting the future. Rarely, but once in a while.

Pierre: Yes.

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

Pierre: Ah…

Lindsay: I know it’s always the toughest question.

Pierre: Okay, I have three jobs. So the main job, lawyer. Second main job, father. Third, that is not my main job, I am also a professor at the university, but only an invited professor. So, I don’t have too many hours on that side. So, is there still some time left for something? Well, I am still doing some research and so I, that’s for me my secret garden. But I cannot do a lot of research because I do not have a lot of time of course. And I’m too tired in the evening or in night. But I still go on reading on specific subject matters that I like in the hope that one day I will have the time to write. Some time, yes.

Lindsay: I love that. That’s great. That’s wonderful.

Lindsay: Well, thank you so much for joining us this week, Pierre. I really appreciate it. This has been wonderful and thank you so much to all of our listeners. 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 so much.

Law Firm ILN-telligence Podcast | Diego Martinez Berlanga and Luis Lavalle, Martinez Berlanga Abogados

Diego Martinez Berlanga and Luis Lavalle are partners at Martinez Berlanga Abogados, the ILN’s corporate member firm for Mexico. More importantly, they are long-time friends, which becomes clear quickly in this fun podcast episode that covers practicing law in Mexico, changing leadership and teaching methods, and why lawyers really aren’t going anywhere.

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 Luis Lavalle, with Martinez Berlanga Abogados, in Monterey. Luis, we’re so happy to have you back with us. You’re another of our returning guests, we’re really glad that you have come back to join us. So for those who have not listened to your previous podcast, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself and the firm, and your practice?

Luis: Sure. Hi, Lindsay. Thank you for having me. And as you said, more than glad to be back in the ILN. As always, I’ve been a big fan of ILN, I’ll always be, and it’s good to be back and to still promote it, and be taking advantage of the, not just lawyers, but the personal relationships we have built within the network. So very happy to be back.

So my name is Luis Lavalle. As Lindsay already mentioned, I’m in Mexico, specifically in Monterey, which is the northern part of Mexico, two hours away from the US border. Monterey, or Nuevo Leon, which is the state, it’s a big industrial state with a lot of companies, a lot of the corporate groups, most corporate groups in Mexico are headed there. So as Lindsay said, I’m right now with Martinez Berlanga Abogados, which is formed by Diego Martinez, who is a good friend of mine, who I’ve known him for a long, long time. We used to work together with the other law firm, Martinez Algaba, which is a litigation law firm right now. And that’s how I met Diego and we’ve built a good relationship.

So now that I joined him again, I think we’re making a very good matchup with the matters that we used to work with at our practices, and I think they’re coming very good together. As I said, Diego is in Mexico City, myself in Monterey, so we get a lot of geographical, either in the north or in the center. And that gives us a very good strength towards our clients. As I said, we do a lot of general corporate work. We specialize a lot in financial transactions, which is the work that we’ve been doing for a long, long time.

We do a lot of mergers and acquisitions, either from the buyer or the seller side, and we comprise all the stages in those kinds of transactions. Right now, it’s been one of the whole areas that we’ve working for. I don’t know why. There’s been crisis, there’s been inflation, but somehow, a lot of opportunities for entities that have money, or entities that are willing to come into Mexico, it’s been going on. And a lot of the ways that they’re coming into Mexico is through the acquisition of either Mexican companies or foreign companies that have a Mexican subsidiary, and that’s how they are trying to get more market within Mexico. And the good investment that can be made here, since Mexico, as a lot of you know, has a very good international trade agreement with a lot of countries, not just the well-known trade agreement with the US and Canada, but also with a lot of countries. So the network of trade agreements that Mexico has gives a very good site to invest in Mexico.

As always, for political reasons, there are some doubts as to coming into Mexico investor because of our government, but the truth is that, even though I might think it’s a bad government or it’s not a very beneficial government, it’s been working very well. And a lot of the world situation right now, it’s giving Mexico a good advantage in having a lot of facilities in Mexico, because of the logistics site of being close to the US, having very good ties with the US. It’s getting Mexico as a very, very hot place to invest right now, especially for foreigners.

Lindsay: That’s great. And speaking of Diego, actually, I think he’s about to join us, so we can bring him in too.

Luis: Oh, good. Please. That would be great.

Lindsay: We have a special extra guest joining us today, so here is Diego Martinez as well.

Diego: Hi, all of you.

Luis: Diego, how are you?

Diego: Hey, Luis. Hi Lindsay. How are you?

Lindsay: Hi, Diego. Good, how are you?

Diego: I was not supposed to be here, but I just wanted to jump in and say, “Hi” to all of you.

Lindsay: Hi, it’s great to see you.

Diego: Hey, Luis. How’s Monterey?

Luis: Very good, Diego. So we’re being recorded, Diego, so we’re right now in an interview, and Lindsay wanted to ask you a couple of questions.

Lindsay: Sure, absolutely. And we’re really happy to have you. And Diego, you yourself are in Mexico City, correct?

Diego: Right, yeah.

Lindsay: Great. So why don’t you tell us a little bit about your practice specifically? Luis was telling us about the benefits of doing business in Mexico at the moment, so why don’t you tell us a little bit about your practice?

Diego: Well, I think that it’s a common and regular practice here in Mexico City, very focused on M&As and all kind of transactions involving Mexican law and Mexican business participants in the market, and also some restructurings, corporate restructurings and financial restructurings, we also participate heavily on that. And as a quite new activity that we have been doing for the past years is helping family offices in their transactions and in their structure, for either high-wealth families and small ones, well, medium size wealth families in Mexico, and very much helping them in the next generation structuring of their assets and of their wealth.

Luis: Transition to the next generations. And that’s a practice that we’ve called, “Family Business,” Lindsay, and I think it’s also getting very hot, at least in the last couple of years, as Diego mentioned.

Lindsay: We’ve seen that with a number of our firms, it’s a really interesting area of business.

Diego: And in Mexico, it’s been particularly interesting because of what Mexico has come from and has evolved as a country itself. Probably last century, there were wars and fights and there were not that many corporate structures in Mexico, it was all very new wealth in Mexico. But as two or three generations have come through, now the families start thinking about how they can maintain their wealth and can make this transition swiftly and evenly. And I think that’s why it’s become work and activity that the families businesses really needed.

And also, another particularity in Mexico is that almost, I would say probably 100%, except corporate America that is in Mexico, 100% of the companies, even though they are public companies, are still family companies. And that means that the families are controlling, the patriarch is controlling the company, then the patriarch nowadays they have children, they have grandchildren, all of them working in the company. And that represents a challenge in how to continue supporting the family, but also supporting the business as itself. And because of that, the legal work and the advice work as a trust advisor, not just as an expertise, has been become a very, very interesting and active activity in Mexico.

Lindsay: Absolutely. So then, what would you say is the biggest challenge that’s facing you in the legal industry at the moment, and how are you working to overcome that?

Diego: I think I would say the participants in Mexico, probably. I’m not sure that Luis will agree, but here in Mexico, as opposed to in the United States, the law firms just shattered all the time in the market. So you are dealing with sometimes not very well experienced law firms that are new law firms with very young people that just started their business out of two or three years in a formal law firm, and they think that they are ready to really come into these kind transactions, and you need to help them to really understand the deal and probably-

Luis: Educate them as well.

Diego: Exactly. I was going to say that was presumptions, but we need to educate these young people that is in front of the table, because otherwise, the business and the transaction doesn’t come through.

Luis: I agree, Diego. Why did you say I was not going to be in agreement? At the end of the day, fortunately for us, I think, we are experienced lawyers, we’ve been more than 30, 35 years in the market and we’ve gained a lot of experience, and that’s, of course, has helped us in putting us in a marketplace where we’ve been well known. And at the end of the day also, as Diego mentioned, it helps to get the business going instead of fighting with the counterparty that it’s always one of the problems or the issues in this kind of transactions. You have a counterparty that might not be well known or might not know how to handle the matter, and at the end of the day, you are directing him, guiding him in order to get the business done, which is a final purpose of clients in these kind of transactions.

Lindsay: Right, right. That’s really client service, in the end. We have this issue in the US and I know we’re trying to work through it with our law schools, but law school really trains lawyers to be good at law school and not so much training them to be good at being a lawyer. Do you find the same thing in Mexico where you’re not so much getting that on-the-job training, where your law schools are more training them to be good at law school?

Luis: Definitely. And that’s an issue that I was discussing yesterday with some clients that are coming into Mexico to set up an entity, a business. These guys are architects in specifically, and I have the same issue. The problem in law schools in Mexico is first our educational system. As you probably know, Lindsay, we don’t have college here in Mexico. You end up in high school and that’s when you have to choose a career, law school, medicine, architecture, accountant, whatever you want. And you are very young, deciding at that age, what you want to become. So that’s a tough one.

Second, the programs of most private universities are structured so that they don’t work. Students are not allowed or they don’t… It’s not that they are not allowed, because they do allow them, but they’re not… The programs are done in a way that they would not incentivize them to work. Diego and myself, for example, since we were probably in first year of law school, we started working, and that’s where you really learn. And a lot of the programs in the university are structured so that they are not incentivized to work until probably the last semesters or the last years, where they have some programs that they call, “Practices,” or [foreign language] or stuff like that.

But definitely, the law schools need to put more attention in practice, and it’s the same issue with architects, and I would guess it’s the same issue with accountants, with same issue with a lot of the professionals. Law schools or education needs to change a lot. We’re seeing it all around. It’s changing, it’s changing. And yeah, they’ve included a lot of courses, a lot of new subjects that are more oriented towards business or more oriented toward the practice, but still, we need to evolve more. What do you think, Diego?

Diego: I agree. And I agree because, as opposed in the US, the way I’ve seen it works when we were working abroad is that, when you are in law school, you really focus on law school during the semester or during the year. And then, you have a three or four months for internship in law firms in New York and these places. And then, you end up this two, three or four months of work, and then you get back to school and then you do that the same thing next year. And then, when you finish law school, you are well-prepared. At least you have an idea.

Actually, lately, what I’ve seen in large law firms in New York is that they have programs where paralegals, they start working for probably a couple of years in a very structured program before going to law school. So then, they go to law school, but they really know how a law firm works and what they are going to be facing in the future. So that makes a lot of sense.And I have very close family members that are doing that in New York, and I think that works, and I think that could work very well in Mexico.

But on the other hand, if the school allows because of the times and schedules of classes, to work in the morning and go to school at night, it’s very tough. It’s very, very difficult life because it’s five years of law school in Mexico and with very little pay out of that. But that also works, and that was Luis’ and my case, that we started at the beginning with very low pays, but working hard every single day, and then going to school and then starting at night. But that pays off.

Luis: Definitely.

Lindsay: No, and it is, as you say, very challenging. On the flip side, you’ve got the young lawyers, but then you also have on the other end, the great leaders. And what would you say that that great leaders have in common?

Luis: Diego?

Lindsay: I know it’s a tough question.

Diego: That’s a tough one.

Luis: Great leaders, what they’ve done in the past and what they’ve built is a career where, at the end, they are known for being a trusted advisor. Not just a lawyer, it’s a trusted advisor to businesses. And we’re talking just in the areas where Diego and myself are practicing. They are well known in law, they know the law, they know how to apply it, but they’re also well known in other matters that comprises the business of a specific client, and they’ve come into being trusted advisors. That’s something that it’s not easy to accomplish or become, and I think those are the leaders or those are the lawyers that you turn around and see and you would like to be part of your advisory team. And that’s an evolution. It’s not something that it’s done from one day to another. It’s not something you learn in law school, and you’re not going to learn it in any school. That’s something that you will get a lot by knowing people, a lot by treating people, a lot by experience. And that’s it, I think.

Diego: I totally agree. And also, I think that a great leader, and that a difference that makes stable law firms in Mexico for the long run, is that the partners of the law firm are committed to develop people, are committed to create learning institutions and not just trying to get their work done and go home and forget about anything else of the firm. And when law firms and partners in large law firms do that, I think that they really make a difference, in the law firm’s industry in Mexico, and in the services that we provide for corporations and for families.

And as Luis was saying, that’s totally true. Some lawyers use this the term that they become not an expert lawyer but a, “Consigliere.” So being in Mexico, this kind of family businesses that I was mentioning, at the end of the day, the families, they have a problem internally, and their first thought is, “Let’s talk to Luis because he will tell us not about what the law says, they will understand the family, they will understand the business, they understand the marketplace, they understand globally the whole thing, and they will give us a good advice.” And that’s what really makes a leader comes through a really well and good services provision.

Lindsay: And Diego, you really alluded to my next question, which is helping to create that next generation and really helping to mentor people. What do you think is the importance of mentorship?

Diego: I think that also what Luis and I lived in the past, trust your partner. Trust them, have patience, because it’s very easy in the process that someone gets either from another firm or for a in-house lawyer, to offer you a position with a little better fees and with a little better salary. Because they offer you a car or because they offer you whatever, and then you go there immediately. And you need to have patience for not doing that, and to understand that this is a long run process and you need to have a mentor, a good partner, that will tell you, “Hold on. Hold your horses. Don’t run.” That would be the difference. And we had the fortune of having this kind of partners since, partners that, even still there in our old firm, and that became mentors, and that became very good friends of the both of us.

Luis: And I think reinforcing what Diego says and as he mentioned, we lived it. We lived it personally. I remember, Diego and myself were associates at Martínez, Algaba, and we had two or three persons that were partners that we work with, we were their associates. And we really learn a lot from them. And that also teaches us on how to proceed with our associates now. Now, Diego and myself as partners, we need to create that relationship. We need to teach what we’ve been taught on practicing law, on contracts, on clauses or on certain situations, and we need to pass it along to our associates. Sometimes, it’s very complicated process because you are with the pressure of getting the work out. Sometimes you have deadlines, but you also have the associates that are helping assisting and might not have the expertise, so you really need to have the time to review the work, to teach them. And that’s not something that is easy to balance when the pressure is on.

So it’s something that, at least what I’ve seen, as I said, I joined Diego several months ago, and the associates we have in our law firm are great. They’ve been taught by Diego very well, and they are loyal, at the end of the day. That’s what they are getting, to be loyal, also, with Diego. ‘Cause they are seeing the advantages. And how do they see them? They go to meetings with clients and they see their peers, compared to them, and how they handle matters, how they know the matters. And you instantly see a difference on the way they’re handling and the knowledge they already have, compared to other ones that have not had the fortune or having somebody that is teaching them or that is mentoring them.

Diego: There are two things that I would like to add here. First, we are trying and we are committed to show to these young lawyers the whole business. When we were young, probably that was something different. They would tell us, “Okay, prepare this promissory note. Prepare this clause of this agreement. Prepare this small piece of the transaction.” But we really didn’t understand what everything was about. And with this, since we are a small law firm, and with this commitment, we bring along the associate and we tell them and explain the whole transaction, the whole rationale of the transaction. And that makes a difference from us, as a small medium law firm, from a large law firms with non-committed associates that are also training the clerks. So that makes a difference.

And the second point here is that you have the time, being a small firm, to take them to social things that they can come and see your clients, get involved. And the clients also start having a professional relationship with these young associates, and it’s better for all of the stakeholders of the process, I would say.

Luis: Definitely.

Lindsay: Absolutely. I think those are huge benefits because the associates get to understand the whole process and why everything matters, instead of feeling like just a cog in an overall machine. They understand why everything that they do matters as part of a transaction or a deal, so I absolutely see the benefit of that.

Diego: And I’m sure how Luis will laugh here, but we have a lot of experience training lawyers because I, myself, I have a lot of experience since I was 13 years old, training horses. And I train my lawyers exactly the same way I train my horses back at that time. And I do the same with my children. I train them like horses, that’s it. A lot of confidence, a lot of passion for what they do. And again, that works, at the end of the day,

Luis: I don’t laugh, that’s truth.

Lindsay: I believe you. I believe you. It makes me think, and this can be a medium size firm question, is about work-life balance, and whether or not that’s even a reality, and whether or not that’s more possible for a firm of your size versus some of these mega firms. But is that something that you think is possible, and what does that even mean?

Diego: Absolutely. That’s important because, again, Mexico where the social life gets very mixed with the professional life. Let me give you an example. One of my associate, he has been with me for eight years, and he’s a very good golfer. And now, he’s playing golf with one of our clients, and they meet every Sunday in the golf course because it happened to be that they were in the same go club, and that that’s very, very important.

But also, what I’ve always said to my people is, it starts making a lot of difference in the process. First, I tell them, “We are not your priority. You are going to work here just a few hours a day and I want you, first, your priority is your school. Your second priority is you have to have fun in your life and your sport and your train, whatever there. And your third priority is the firm. But that start changing when you finish your law school. Then, you need to party and you need to have fun and you need to be passionate in what you do. But then, there’s a time, like at our age, that everything is work, everything is your law firm, and then again you start changing it.” But that’s the way we try to tell them how to balance their life, because otherwise, you’re going to burn them out.

Luis: And also, Lindsay, I think the pandemic give us a big, big punch on the face to all of us, and it changed, I think, for good, the way we need to see things in terms of life besides work. And of course, it’s been a lot of studies around new generations, these how they call the, “Baby boomers” or the new generations.

Diego: Why generational that-

Luis: They have other priorities, and we know the priorities is not work. Their priorities is to have fun, to travel, to get to know other places, if they have family, of course, the priority is the family and then work, et cetera. So it’s changed, I think, for good. And even for us. Probably in the past, Diego and I would spend I don’t know how many hours, a lot of hours, in the law firm. Right now, you need to see that there’s life after law firms. And we’re trying to get that balance as well.

Lindsay: I agree. It’s so very important. So to wrap up, what would you say the future of the legal market looks like, and how do we get there?

Luis: Diego? I have my opinions, but I think Diego also asks.

Diego: Go ahead, go ahead.

Luis: Well, there’s a lot of things right now, and if you see some of the studies regarding artificial intelligence and which professions are going to be gone, some of them, they say it’s lawyers. To be honest, at least right now, I don’t see it that way. I see lawyers, as Diego mentioned, like personal advice or personal [foreign language], and that’s not something artificial intelligence is going to give you. Yeah, artificial intelligence might give you a very good contract with a lot of clauses that you might not be able to draft. Probably yes, because at the end of the day, that’s how it started.

But the relationship, I would say, even… I don’t know. In a negotiation, in a meeting, the way you look at people, the way you read their faces, the way you negotiate or you try to get a point in your favor or argument, that’s not something artificial intelligence is going to give you. So I see our profession just evolving a lot on these new programs, this new artificial intelligence. But at the end of the day, as we mentioned, programs in law schools might change, and might adapt, but being a lawyer, being a person, is not going to change. And the person, that’s, I think, the basis. It’s the basis for our profession. Relationships, persons.

Diego: I would put it this way. Those are only instruments for the lawyers, not substitutions.

Luis: Exactly.

Diego: Substitutes for the lawyers.

Luis: See how we compliment ourselves, Lindsay?

Lindsay: That’s great. It’s good that you work so well together. And I couldn’t agree more. Like anything else, Diego, you put it perfectly, they’re instruments. And I think it will make some of your jobs easier, and then it’ll free you up to do to be that advisor, which is the things, hopefully, that you really enjoy doing. So thank you both so much for being here today and for participating in this really interesting conversation. I really appreciate it, and we look forward to being back next week with another guest. And for all of our listeners, thank you for being here too. Please take a moment to rate, review, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. And thank you both.

Luis: Thank you, Lindsay.

Diego: Thank you very much. Bye, all.

Law Firm ILN-telligence Podcast | Alina Crisu, LLPO Law Firm

Alina Crisu is the PR and Communication Associate with LLPO Law Firm, the International Lawyers Network’s member firm for Cyprus. In this episode, Lindsay and Alina talk about having a passion for your work, the future of legal marketing in a digital world, and what she loves most about her work.

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 with the International Lawyers Network. And our guest this week is Alina Crisu with LLPO Law Firm, our law firm in Nicosia, Cyprus. Alina, welcome. We’re so glad to have you with us this week. Thank you for joining us.

Alina: Hi, Lindsay. Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure and an honor.

Lindsay: So why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself and your position with the firm? And we’ll dive in.

Alina: Excellent. Well, my name is Alina Crisu. It has an accent, actually. I’m born and raised in Romania. And I’ve been living in Cyprus for almost a decade now. And I am the PR communication and marketing associate at LLPO Law Firm in Cyprus, Nicosia.

Lindsay: Great. Well, thank you so much for joining us. And so let’s dive into our questions. What would you say is your biggest challenge at the moment? And how are you working to overcome that?

Alina: Well, to be honest, I feel quite lucky because I don’t have any major challenges at the moment. My brother has had a baby girl, the first child in the family. And I feel lucky enough because, through my work, I can work remotely. So I can be here for this beautiful moment in our family’s life. And to be honest, since Covid, I learned to live in the present moment.

So I take every day as it comes and I deal with issues as they come and I try to organize my life in the near present or near future so that I don’t overwhelm myself with thinking. It can be overwhelming. So I’ve embraced a gratitude mindset, and I’m even grateful for the challenges that come along because we’ve all seen how we can grow from them and be a better version of ourselves basically. I do have goals, but I don’t stress myself with the timeline anymore. Sometimes if it doesn’t happen when I thought it was supposed to happen or how it was supposed to happen, I let it go and I stay flexible and with a positive mind and sometimes some things are above my understanding and they do happen.

Lindsay: That’s a really great attitude, and congratulations on your family’s new addition. That’s really wonderful. And I’m so glad that you’re able to be there to be a part of it. And I think that is really one of the wonderful things. Not that the pandemic was a blessing by any means, but I think there are some silver linings that came about as a result of that. And is your office back full-time in the office or are you all doing some more flexible working in the same way that you’re able to be flexible at the moment?

Alina: Everyone is flexible. The office is still flexible. We’ve actually recently moved into a new office space. We kept the old office space, but some of the staff members have moved into a newer office space. And everyone has their own place. However, they’re lawyers. They might need time to study for a case and they might not want to take everything with them at home. There’s confidential documents. So they might stay in the office or they have to go to court. So maybe they don’t want to come to the office in the morning. They’re just going to go directly from home. But we are flexible. There is still this availability of the hybrid work. Hybrid, still hybrid.

Lindsay: That’s great. That’s really great. So talk to us about the current state of the market and what that means for your law firm.

Alina: As we’ve seen, Cyprus is a small country and it’s a small country in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, a bit more towards the East. And it’s an island. It’s protected to an extent, but it’s still, everything else still comes there. Everything else that’s happening in the world in the end, it trickles down to Cyprus as well. So we have seen increases in gas prices, which of course creates this domino effect of everything else that’s in the supply chain.

And so we have seen prices increasing for food, for electricity, especially electricity was crazy this year. Some people are struggling as when it comes to the law firm, there isn’t a huge impact. But we do have to pay a bit more attention to how the clients pay their bills because we also have to pay our bills and it’s a domino effect. And if they don’t pay, then we don’t pay. So we’re a bit more strict and we pay a bit more attention to the billing hours. And when we send the invoices and if there’s anything that’s overdue. Now, we have stood the test of time throughout the other financial crisis that have happened in the world. 2008, it kind of hit us more towards 2013. But because of Covid, I think we saw it coming. This is why we’ve joined ILN and we’ve implemented a few more marketing strategies and we’ve updated our online presence so that we are more out there and we are more implicated in the international world and we are more rooted on the market basically.

Lindsay: And do you think those lessons have better prepared you to face these market challenges that are coming for all of the companies and law firms that we see happening right now?

Alina: Of course they have. I want to take everything with a grain of salt to an extent because I can make a prediction and it might not happen because we’ve seen what happened during Covid. And most of us, for instance, were not expecting for the war to happen. So we can be prepared to an extent, but as I said in the previous comment that I made is we’re going to take each issue that comes and each challenge at a time because otherwise, even as a law firm, we’re made of people. We’re going to feel overwhelmed. So we have the partners that have gone through similar situations. They have experience. And then we just deal with what comes when it comes.

Lindsay: Speaking of people, what do you think great business leaders have in common?

Alina: That’s a great question. Well, one of my recent, let’s say, ideals is the capacity to listen. I think it’s crucial just… And not only in a meeting room and not only to your staff members, but paying attention to what’s happening around the world as well and being able to filter the noise and gain the information and the juice that you need to use for your business.

Lindsay: I absolutely agree. And then I think a knock-on question from that is, considering all of the things that are happening in the world right now, how do you then have those difficult conversations with the members of your firm, given all of the challenges that we’re facing in the world right now? I think we saw that with Covid, with the market challenges we’re facing, with the war in Ukraine. How do great leaders or really anybody have difficult conversations with the members of their firm?

Alina: I think being direct is important and honest. Because you can hide some things, but people will feel that there’s something wrong and we all want to be able to help. It’s one of the human traits. And if you’re honest and direct with your team members, your bosses, your bosses with you, it creates this environment where we end up helping each other. Maybe today we’re not going to order this particular type of coffee. If we need to do some budget cuts, we’re going to bring our own coffee from home or order from a different supplier. Let’s see if the conversation is about budget cuts. If the conversation is about other difficult things, maybe a difficult client, then it’s a different conversation. But I believe that being direct and honest with a calm attitude gets you a long way. And because I’m Romanian, we inherently develop this humor and we approach things with a sprinkle of humor into it. Even sometimes it’s dark, but it pushes you forward through difficult situations and difficult conversations. So yeah, that’s humor. Humor is important.

Lindsay: It can definitely help even, if it’s dark.

Alina: It’s a survival mechanism. It’s good.

Lindsay: For sure. For sure. I totally agree with that. Yeah, absolutely. Do you think that it’s possible to have a work-life balance? And what does that even mean these days? I feel like we all… Especially you’re talking about working remotely and working remotely, is it even possible to have a work-life balance when you’re working remotely?

Alina: I don’t believe in that anymore. I think it’s a flawed concept and it just sets us up for failure. It’s an illusion to think that we just go to this place from nine to five, five days a week, eight hours a day for three, four decades, and it’s not part of our lives. It is. It is your life. Some people might not be so lucky to be able to change their careers, may not be in a position where they can actually do that. But if you can, if you’re in a workplace where you’re miserable, then you should find some strength in improving that. If you can change the industry, if you like the industry, maybe you don’t like the environment in which work, so maybe you should change the company.

Work is part of life and it’s life. We should find the right place for us where we should aim to better our lives, spending most of our days using the best of our skills and bring value into the world. And this is going to make us as well feel valued, and it’s going to give us a sense of purpose and a sense of belonging. And again, we’re going to be living in the present. It should be a place where you don’t feel like you must do that, is you go there because you want to do that.

Lindsay: Yeah. No, that’s a very important point. We do spend the majority of our lives at work. So it should be something that brings you passion and that you enjoy.

Alina: And when you are passionate in what you do, it’s easier to go through the difficult times as well. Because let’s face it, even if you love what you do, you will always have challenges. But you will have that desire to move forward. The wheels will move. You will find a solution. You will talk to the right people. You will push through the doors and progress will come.

Lindsay: Right. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Alina: As humans, we are built like that. This is why we have evolution, and this is why we have the technological developments that we have because we do push through and we do find solutions. So I believe there’s a way for everyone to find their career path that will bring them fulfillment, not only financially, but financial fulfillment, but also in the rest of their life.

Lindsay: So what does the future of the legal market look like and how do we get there?

Alina: Okay. Well, I think the future of the legal market is here. Yes, unmistakably. And it’s digital. So wherever we’re going to turn a corner right now, it’s digital. Because you have all the legislation that needs to be created for everything that it’s digital. You have the AI’s development. You have the social media development. You have the criminal digital development. So it’s huge. Now, from a marketing perspective, I do believe that in the next maybe 10 to 15 years, every law firm should have an in-house marketing professional because they have to focus on the digital activity of the company.

And it’s one thing to have a marketing professional from a company that deals with this from a marketing company, and another thing to have an in-house marketing professional. And maybe actually create a team of marketing professionals that focus on different aspects of marketing, because some of it, it will be digital. It will be data collection. It will be KPIs. It’s a wide industry. And because you deal with law firms and because the content, it’s sensitive because it has to be catered to each law firm and to their specific way of doing business, then you need an in-house team of marketeers that will understand the business, that will build the communication. I see marketeers as the bridge between the client and the services.

So the marketeers will have to understand what the legislation is, what is the need of the market, and how to better cater it for the potential clients and how to create the message. Legislative terms can be very heavy and are not understood by the wide market. So marketeers are the bridge that will help translate and put into common language what the law firm can do for the potential clients. So they will understand, this is what I need, I have to go here.

Lindsay: Right, right. Yeah, no, I absolutely agree with you because I think a lawyers especially love to speak in legalese, which is fine. But clients, even clients who are lawyers, don’t necessarily want to receive their materials in that language. They want to speak the language of business. And so a lot of times, it is up to the marketers to translate that into a business language that is what the clients are reading and listening to. And who knows the business of the law firm better than the in-house marketer? Nobody. So I fully agree with you. Absolutely. So how do we get there? As you said, you build the in-house marketing team, then.

Alina: How do we get there? It’s difficult to convince lawyers that there’s someone out there that knows better a particular subject. I know. I know. I think, although I’m saying that I do believe that the younger generation of lawyers do understand this. They are fully aware of the new development of the market because they are part of this. So they are fully aware. Maybe through ILN, because it’s a great network and it has great potential. And the purpose of it is to help its members reach their full potential in collaboration. It can be brought more often to their attention that they might need a marketing team or a marketing advisor, even if it’s a part-time situation in the beginning, just so they can see the value in it.

I have noticed a clash in this idea. Some lawyers do not really see the benefit of having someone that does marketing. They don’t see the benefit in digital marketing. They don’t see the benefit in marketing whatsoever. Personally, I’ve seen that, not from my firm, but from other law firms, other lawyers. The only way you can present this, I think, is through the success of another law firm. They’ll be presented as a case study. This is what we’ve done. This is what our firm is doing. This was our strategy. These are the people and this is the success. This is the result. And I think this will work. It’s just facts, proof and there’s no denying that afterwards.

Lindsay: Well, I like the old adage goes, law firms or lawyers don’t want to be first, but they want to be first to be second. So if you can prove it to a lawyer, then they’ll be happy to take it on.

Alina: How is it in the United States?

Lindsay: It’s fairly standard to have at least at a mid-size law firm level and above to have at least a team of marketers. So although I would say that for most firms, although it’s come on in the last 15 years, for a long time, the marketing team was still considered a cost center. But the last 15 years, I would say that marketers have really done a good job of getting a seat at the table and proving their worth. And a lot of CMOs and directors of marketing are considered an essential part of their law firm management team now. 15 years ago, especially when I first joined the ILN and I was a part of the Legal Marketing Association, which is a marketing organization that is… It is international, but it’s primarily based here in the US and Canada. There was more discussion about how do we get lawyers to take legal marketers seriously?

They really did think of legal marketing as brochures and that type of thing. Which now, I think lawyers, especially in the US, understand that there is a lot more strategy involved in it, which has been really a helpful shift here in the US. So I think a lot of things, not everything is led by the US, but in legal marketing, I definitely see that shift happening where there is that belief that we need strategy. And I say we, I used to consider myself more of a legal marketer than I do now. I have more of an executive function now. But I used to take on a much more-

Alina: Which ever terms make you feel comfortable. It’s okay.

Lindsay: I used to take on a much more marketing role than I do now. But legal marketers in the US certainly do. There’s much more differentiated roles, especially at the big firms. They have pretty big teams. There can be very large teams of marketers at US firms where there’s a director of marketing. They oversee a pretty big staff. And it’s really quite interesting. So I’m hoping that is going to be seen in Europe especially. And for ILN firms, we see that too. I’ve seen a shift where there are more European firms having bigger marketing departments. I see that definitely in the UK has a fairly substantial marketing staff. In Asia, we really don’t see it at all.

Alina: So this is something that I wanted to say and I touched on in my mind. That US is definitely a leader when it comes to marketing and incorporating the marketing strategy and the department into law firms. Then the more you get out of the United States, you go towards Europe and the more East you go on the globe, then you see less and less and less marketing involvement. And in Asia, as far as I understand, in some countries, it’s not even allowed to advertise.

Lindsay: Yes.

Alina: So the tools are not even there. You’re not allowed to advertise. It’s still word to mouth. And United States, because it’s so business driven and it’s so competitive, it’s a completely different land from the rest of the world. And it does create precedent. And you get to see the case studies and examples of how this could work and how you could implement it into your business strategy. And I do hope that in Europe, this will grow more and more in the law firms.

Lindsay: I agree. I agree. So it has been very interesting for us, I think, as an organization to see over the years, which firms are limited by what they’re allowed to do on their websites. You have to have extreme disclaimers or even just have one very basic page. Some people cannot have business cards or anything can be construed as lawyer advertising, attorney advertising. So it’s really interesting that certain things in the US that are allowed to happen on a broad basis, and people will say, “Well, let’s just do this globally.”

And then it’s like, no, no, no. You have to know what the advertising laws are in every jurisdiction and make sure that you’re abiding by the laws in those jurisdictions. Which again, I think speaks to your point about why it’s so important to have a marketing professional in-house in a lot of jurisdictions, because then what is permitted in that jurisdiction as opposed to having somebody who might just come in, even from a global perspective and say, “Lawyers should be doing this,” because then your marketing professional can say, “No, no.” We can maybe produce this article, but even that can be attorney advertising in some jurisdictions.

Alina: And that that’s a completely different ball game as well from a time and cost perspective because it’s going to be… Anyway, it’s always a difficult task just to get an article approved when you’re there, just to get for everyone to a agree on a particular topic, let alone to go back to the firm that is doing the marketing, have it passed through another 10 hands and then go back. “No, this word is wrong. And this is no. And why are we doing this in the end?” No, no. It doesn’t make sense. You need someone in-house that knows the quirks of each partner, knows the quirks of each lawyer and they know how to deal with them. You also become an HR representative because you have to learn how each person communicates and what their field is. It’s just [inaudible] being a law firm marketeer, it’s a different ball game.

Lindsay: That’s very true. So on that note, what do you really like about your job?

Alina: I love about my job the diversity of tasks that I have to deal with on a regular basis. I like challenges and I love dealing with different things. I think I have a bit of ADHD. So it actually keeps me focused dealing with multiple things. And I love the fact that I learn something new every day and no day is the same with the other. So it keeps me young and curious. It can be overwhelming sometimes ’cause there are sometimes a lot of information that you have to go through in a very short period of time. And today it might be valid, tomorrow it might not be valid because social media. But I do love… This is what I love. I deal with different tasks and I love that I get to design and create content and I get to speak with different people and it’s hands-on as well and it communicates a lot. So yeah.

Lindsay: I love that so much. That’s great. And I think that is the life of a law firm marketer is that no two days are the same.

Alina: It’s true.

Lindsay: So let’s wrap up and please tell me one thing that is outside of the legal market, outside of your work, that you’re really enjoying right now. I know. That’s my tough question.

Alina: Wow. That is a tough question. What I’m really enjoying right now? I’m enjoying creating a portfolio for myself.

Lindsay: That’s exciting.

Alina: I’m into UX design as well. So I’ve been dipping my feet into UX design. I find it fascinating and it teaches me about the practicalities of the digital world. It’s kind of being an architect without having to go in the field and doing the work because it’s not coding. It’s just dealing with the practical side and the beautiful side of everything that we see digitally. Everything, even your Netflix platform or your apps on your phone, they all need a UX designer. And I find it fascinating. That’s something I enjoy right now.

Lindsay: That’s very cool. Good for you.

Alina: I’m a geek.

Lindsay: Nothing wrong with that. Well thank you so much for joining us. I really appreciate it. And we look forward to speaking again. And thank you 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 will be back again next week with our next guest. Thank you very much.

Law Firm ILN-telligence Podcast | Pal Jalsovszky, Jalsovszky Law Firm

Pal Jalsovszky is the managing partner of Jalsovszky Law Firm in Budapest, Hungary and a member firm of the International Lawyers Network. In this episode, Lindsay talks to Pal about how to manage your firm and your clients through a major firm transition, what the future of the legal industry may look like, and the secret superpower of being a tax 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’m your host Lindsay Griffiths, Executive Director of the International Lawyers Network. And our guest this week is actually our first guest ever, Pal Jalsovszky of Jalsovszky Law Firm in Budapest, Hungary. Pal, we’re so happy to have you back. Thanks for joining us again.

Pal: All right, it is my pleasure. Thank you for inviting me, Lindsay.

Lindsay: So why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself and your firm for those that didn’t get the chance to listen to our first podcast?

Pal: Well, actually we are a law firm in Budapest. We have 30 lawyers, which from a US perspective might be considered as a real tiny law firm. In fact, in Budapest, it’s already an upper medium-sized law firm. We are somewhere in number 14 or 15 in the rankings. Well, we provide advice on all areas of commercial law, starting from tax law, actually I’m a tax lawyer, so taxes are a main topic and a main area of law when we started the firm. And since then, we grow up to be a full-size law firm. But the main areas other than tax are mergers and acquisitions, property law, banking and finance, and litigation.

Lindsay: Great. Thank you. So let’s dive in. What would you say is your biggest challenge at the moment, and how are you working to overcome it?

Pal: Well, the biggest challenge at the moment doesn’t relate to the economic environment or anything that is happening around us. It relates to an internal effort of the firm because one of our partners who has been serving us for seven years has just indicated that he would leave, and actually he already left. He left last December. And he was leading our banking and finance department. Banking and finance is not among the cornerstones of the firm. The partner who just left last December has brought our banking and finance practice in the firm seven years ago. And since then, it grown to be a very visible and very reputable sector in our office. And the real question was what we do after the departure. And actually together with him, two of our associates have left, so we were left with one sole associate to build up again the practice.

And it’s always an interesting question when anything like this happens how you react. And that can be two types of reaction wise and wonder, “Okay, then this happened. He brought in the practice, he just took it away.” And this would’ve been a very easy answer. The answer, the way that we selected is just the opposite. We try to build it back the practice. And also it’s important to say that the lady who was left is about to have a baby in June. So in June, the practice will be completely empty. So it is an extremely big challenge, but it also gives a test that how steady your law firm is, how steady the reputation of the firm is in terms of the clientele and in terms of potential requisites.

And we started a recruitment procedure just after the announcement was made by the leaving partner and we hired a headhunter. They tried to find good candidates to lead the group. On the other hand, we started discussions with the key participants of our practice, of our clientele lead to see what their reactions are, would they be happy with rebuilding the practice, would they be happy with us serving them under new conditions and under a new setup? And when you dig into such type of issues, when you test the market, it just reflects what the real strengths of the firm are. And we were happy to get the response from the clients that they were extremely happy with us, and they will be happy to stay with us if we rebuild the practice.

On the other hand, from a banking perspective, the market is not the best, because the interest rates are raising high and there is a lesser demand by banks to lend to enterprises. And also there’s a lot of uncertainty in the market. Therefore, it is just an environment where an older banking lawyer would just say that “I want security. I want to stick at my place.” And in such an environment we could pick up two, three candidates who were extremely interested in the position. And we are in the final round of the selection process.

But all the results were very promising and hopefully we’ll be able to sign a contract with the new candidate to head the group at the end of February. I don’t know when it will come on live, but probably, it’ll be already in the past when this discussion will come on live. But it is a real test to the integrity of our firm also because internally you have to sell it that it’s not the end of the world that a partner leaves the firm. Because the departure of a partner always just shakes up the balance of powers and the feeling of security and safety of our colleagues. But this was a big test and we are challenging it and we are facing with it. And it appears to me at the moment, attach to wood, that we are able to solve it. But we need to invest a lot of effort and a lot of work into it.

Lindsay: Absolutely. Obviously, as you say, something like this is a really big challenge for a firm. But do you think that because in the last several years all of us have seen so many challenges and had to face them head-on, do you think that really prepared you as a firm and in particular you as a leader to address this directly and just say, “We’ve already seen so many challenges that were unexpected that this is just something else that we have to deal with and we’re not afraid to meet this head on”?

Pal: Exactly. And I fully share your view on that. One thing that is steady in life is change. You are faced with changes all the time. Sometimes it’s more regular, sometimes it’s like pregnant. And it is correct that in the last couple of years, we were faced with lots of challenges. And yes, it’s increased the strengths of how to face challenges. It’s not the end of the world if something goes out of the order, out of the trail that you were going in the past. And that you are confident that you can solve these matters.

And for example, just one of the recent challenges two years ago with COVID. And I do remember the first couple of weeks when this whole COVID turned up, that all of us were worried that what is going to happen, whether economically we go on, whether clients will still want legal advice. And all of a sudden the demand for the service of our law firms have dropped significantly. And it was also a type of a situation that you needed to gather information, you needed to keep contact with the clients more regularly, understand what’s happening with them, understand their reaction. And yes, this is in a different pattern, but the same type of exercise that you need to understand the reaction of a certain event in your partners within the group, within the firm, outside, within the client. And to act in a speedy manner, and to act rationally, and to be prudent. We are getting used to the challenges. It is correct.

Lindsay: I wish we could get used to fewer challenges, but I think that’s probably not the case anymore. Speaking of challenges, you did mention the market contractions, can you talk a little bit about the current state of the market and what that means for you as a firm and for your clients?

Pal : Well, probably you will not be surprised that the market is shaken up at the moment. I remember last summer when we were talking about that. “Oh, something will happen in the autumn time. And in the autumn time, everything will been shaken up, we’ll be upside down.” And the autumn came and nothing has really happened. And clients were saying, and this was the general business intelligence, that the crisis will come during the wintertime. And we are in the middle of the wintertime and nothing really has changed at the moment. One thing is present is the unpredictability and uncertainty. And when the prospects are uncertain and expectations are uncertain, this is bad for economy, this is bad for transactions, and this is bad for the lawyer’s job as well.

There are a lot of reasons for uncertainty. There is the war still ongoing and you do not see the end of the war. There is inflation, there is a possible decrease in the demand, there is the split of supply chains, there was the increase of the price, not really the increase, but the unpredictability of the price of raw materials. And all of our clients or most of them have suffered from it. And in such a case when there’s unpredictability, then pricing, for example, in M&A transaction is becoming uncertain. And the buyers have a bigger confidence in their firm by sellers. By purchasers, they see a result, current result, they see an uncertainty, which makes the chance for agreement on the price is lower.

Also, there’s a question to what extent private funds are able to raise money and are able to pull up money from the investors. Also, interest rates have increased, which makes the banking lending frequency much lower. So there are lots of such circumstances and events that are not connected to Hungary that is connected to the entire world. But it has also, it affected Hungary, which makes the future uncertain and which makes our clients a bit worried.

And it does have its effect on the operations of our firm. Which even last year we saw a drop in property transactions. We are seeing a drop at the moment in M&A transactions. We started a lot of M&A deals in the middle of last year, but some of them were suspended, some of them were postponed, and there are fewer transactions, much, much fewer transactions in the pipeline than there were a year ago. So these service lines are a bit dropping in their frequency or in the business.

On the other hand, we are happy to see our other service lines to be very busy. We are the number one firm in tax advisory, and tax advisory is still a product that is very much sought by the client. We have a very steady waste management, a waste planning business line, which is soaring, which is going very, very well. Also, litigation department still has lots of cases to handle. So I would not like to complain and in general our firm is growing steadily. Well, there is definitely a drop in certain types of transaction, but I consider that this is just a temporary drop and they will revive the activity in the second half of the year.

Lindsay: That’s great. That’s good news. You talked about tax still being very important for clients. What would you say is the biggest area related to your practice that you’re curious about at the moment and why? What’s of most interest to you?

Pal: Well, I’m curious about the entire future. I’m curious about the future of the entire world. I’m curious about whether we’ll enter into the third world war. I’m curious about what the global climate change will bring in. So at the moment, I’m curious about lots of things. And I always have in my mind that I would like to be buried and revived in 100 years time, and just read the history books that describe what happened in the 100 years after my demise.

But a very special thing that I’m interested about, it’s linked to our operation, but not very directly linked to our business or activities, is the future of legal technology. Because I believe that, realistically, technology can be used by lawyers very efficiently in many of their practices. Let’s talk about putting together contracts, digging in databases, also answering clients’ questions, putting together memorandum. And I believe in 30 years’ time or 40 years’ time, the legal profession will be changed entirely.

On the other hand, the real question is how we get from now to the situation which I predict in 30 years’ time. It is interesting to see the steps of development or the absence of, still, the massive use of legal technology. Although I know that in certain IT centers in the US, in the UK, law firms are investing massively in legal technology. Well, at least, I would be interested to see is really what type of job is done there. And I would be happy to send our legal technology manager for a year in technology center of a big American law firm to spy, to see what they are doing, and to make the most out of it, and introduce it to our law firm.

But this is a very interesting development that sooner or later will appear in the legal business. But we are talking about on it for 5 years, for 10 years, and few things have really changed that have materially changed our daily practice. But they will come without question. But the interesting thing is how they will, and in what moment, with what rapidity, with what speed they will enter into a daily practice and when.

Lindsay: I agree with you. And I think one of the most sort of interesting developments in the last few months is the new AI ChatGPT.

Pal: Absolutely.

Lindsay: And how that’s going to impact. I know Jim Flynn from Epstein Becker & Green, our member firm from New York and Washington, just wrote a really interesting blog post and used some of that in his actual post. He had some mixed reviews for using it. But I think that’s going to really impact the legal industry, and I wonder what the impact of that’s going to be?

Pal: And that actually it’s also in the legal industry, but also on anything that we put it to writing. We promoted a partner the beginning of this year, and actually we just played with the idea that when we just announced the promotion, we used this chat functionality. And we just asked the chatbot to provide us an announcement. It was a very, very good wording. At the end we didn’t use it, but we were just curious that if it was not for us to put together announcement, but we left it for the AI, what could be the result. The result was at very high standard. And it’s developing and it’s increasing its capacity day by day. So it will have an impact on everything. Also on writing fictions, on writing articles, on writing legal memorandum, and also making public announcements of the arrival of partner or the promotion of partner.

Lindsay: Absolutely. And I always think of it as having two functions in the legal field, not only the actual impact of potentially writing, as you say, legal memorandums, but then as you say, when it has an impact on other industries, then the legal field will need to know what’s happening in those industries. So that it will then have a say on what the impact is on those industries as to what the legal industry will need to get involved in. And what happens when an AI does something in those industries, what’s the knock-on effect of that have to do then with the legal industry?

Pal: The very question that what will be the role of us human beings. Do we have any role any longer?

Lindsay: Right. And who owns it? I mean it turns… And that becomes very interesting sort of copyright issues because if an AI writes something, who owns the copyright? I know we had that very interesting sort of chimpanzee issue with the photograph that the chimp took, who owned that copyright? So I think we’re going to see some very interesting legal cases coming out of this to watch.

Pal: I fully agree.

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

Pal: Well, to tell to the listeners, you have already posed this question in writing, so I could just have the opportunity to make my reflection on it. But I was just thinking that what would be the most interesting, because I could say that I was an opera singer at the age of 10, and I’m also bridge player, but I believe that the most relevant thing is that at my heart and even as my first profession, I’m not a lawyer, I am an economist. And my first study was at the University of Economics. And I always felt as an alien in the legal business and among lawyers. So I never considered myself as a lawyer.

So it was interesting that when I entered into the UK, probably, it is there at the moment as well. Because when Hungary and the UK were also part of the EU, we didn’t have to fill out any forms, any immigration form. But I remember when I had to fill out immigration form and there was also always a question, what is your occupation? I have never written lawyer. Because I didn’t feel myself as a lawyer, although, I also have my second degree, it was a legal degree. And I was acting as a lawyer for 10 years or 15 years giving legal advice and trying to solve clients’ legal problems.

But what I like most in my life and also in my law firm is not the provision of legal advice, but the management of the law firm and using my knowledge and my capability that I learned as an economist and not the one that I learned as a lawyer. It has lots of faces. Because, for example, I find it a much more interesting and intriguing part of my job to prepare a controlling report on the financials of my firm than to write a legal memo. Probably I’m, not probably, 10 or 15 years ago at my old law firm, I was the only one who could handle an Excel sheet.

And I do remember when all my lawyers were just behind me, when I just added up, I summed up my bills that I had to pay at the post, and I summed up all the 10 figures there in an Excel sheet, which is the simplest use of an Excel sheet. They were looking, what type of program do I use? I feel myself as a bit alien in a legal profession, but it is also my benefit and my key asset, because I can talk to clients not as a lawyer, but I can talk to them at their own language.

I do understand what the expectations are from a lawyer. That they do not want to receive a very big memorandum at the end with really questions that the answer can be yes, the answer can be no, but we do not provide you any clear answer and we do not assume any responsibility. But they would like to get an answer that “Okay, 80% yes, but if you choose yes, then the potential negative outcome is this and this and this.” So I more understand their reasoning, their way of thinking.

And this helped me a lot in also building up the firm, also managing the firm, keeping contact with the client that I don’t feel myself as a lawyer. And also just to take into account that I never felt really good in a company when there are only lawyers present. All my companies, all my friends are coming from my university of economics. And I very much feel like at home when I’m with tax lawyers because tax lawyers, they are a very special kind of animals. They have the same type of strange way of thinking that I have. So I’m very happy to be together with tax lawyers. But as a lawyer, I never felt like really big part of them.

Lindsay: That’s very interesting. And yes, tax lawyers certainly are their own animal. And I’m sure that really has served you well. I mean one of the things that I know we’ve encouraged in the legal profession, the last certainly 10 or so years, is to run it more like a business and less like a law firm. So you are really ahead of the game there. That’s really amazing. So what would you say is the most important lesson you’ve learned over your career?

Pal: Well, I’m talking now as a leader and not as a lawyer. And when you’re a leader and you’re leading 30/40 people, which doesn’t seem to be much, but 30/40 people, are 30/40 different human beings who all of them have emotions, all of them have a special understanding of what I’m interpreting to them. And actually I have a responsibility towards the firm, towards my colleagues. I also have a responsibility as the leader of one of the most prestigious law firm in the society, in the general day-to-day communication. And what is important is that I take care of, really of what I’m saying, how I’m putting together my phrases and phrasing my sentences. Because in the past, I could easily found myself in a way when I offended someone. I didn’t want to offend them.

I try to make a joke, I try to make a very special argument, but with people who are around me, and they do not have the same type of thinking that I do, I have to stay very cautious and very prudent of what I’m saying, and how I’m saying. And it’s important when I do want to make an announcement, I make a preparation of what I’m about to say, and what words I will use. For example, it was an interesting lesson, an interesting example when I announced the departure of my partner. Well, I just written down just word by word my, I wouldn’t say a speech, but the type of message that I want to just address to my colleagues in order to be really clear-cut, to encourage them, to let them know how will we deal with this situation. Because once you make a small mistake and you are not clear enough, you can be misinterpreted, then you may not be able to correct or take back the mistake that you have committed. Correct the mistake. Sorry.

Lindsay: Absolutely. That’s very true. Can you tell us about a mentor that you had who meant a lot to you during your career?

Pal: This is also a question I thought about a lot, but I didn’t find a real good answer for that. I consider myself more a self-made man. And I try to pick up from everyone the thing that I believe he makes right. But I put it together according to my own set of assets. And I do remember one person who very early in my career had a big impression on me and he still has a big impression. I started before my legal career, I was in the insurance industry as a finance person. And then the head of that insurance company was a very characteristic, very strong guy with charisma. And at that time you probably had lots of leaders like that. At the moment, currently there are very few leaders who are really strong personalities.

And I do remember when the head of the insurance company just announce something, there was no question about that. It was the single God, it was such an authority that no one was about to challenge. He had that personality and such type of authority that you very rarely find today. I’m not that type of a guy. I always believe that I have mixed strengths in company management. In certain cases, I’m performing well. In certain cases, I can still study a lot. But he is just such a personality that you imagine for yourself as a leader of an enterprise, and I very much admired his style of leadership.

And also when I was confronted to him, and I do remember that, at that occasion, with that firm, I was the second ranked at the finance department. And there was an elderly lady who was the boss of the department. And you can expect that I was at that time, 27 years old, that the lady was 50 years old, and we had many conflicts against each other. And I always just went to the boss saying that I do not agree with the lady. He always turned me down. He was very straightforward, that what was important to him, that if there is a conflict between me and the head of the department, he was all things giving right to the head, because she was the one who represented the management of the financial service area in that insurance company. And I do remember that in many occasions, I believe, “Why doesn’t he believe me? Why doesn’t he see that with more in details?” But now I see that sometimes you need to simplify your decisions, and you have to have certain ideas, certain principles, and you need to stick to it.

Lindsay: Absolutely. And so wrapping up, what does being a part of the ILN mean to you?

Pal: It’s interesting. When we joined ILN, I had a different expectation that ended up altered. Because when you are in the growing phase of your law firm, you would like to make as much files as much humanly as possible. And you just join an organization saying that, “Hey, they will send me a lot of referrals.” And I do remember that the people joining, I end up, “Oh, they’re a bunch of people from different jurisdictions, most of them will have very interesting efforts concerning Hungary, so within a short period of time, we will have lots of files, lots of cases landing on our desk.”

And later on, it turned out to me that the real strengths of ILN is not that. I wouldn’t say that we do not receive good cases from ILN members, but the real strengths of ILN is that they provide a community, an international community that I feel myself being a part of. I can always just be proud that we are an international law firm in the sense that we have international affiliations. If I have a problem in any part of the world, I do not have to open up a legal 500 directory, but I turn to you or turn to others of your colleagues, even if this is in Belize or in Guatemala. Then I can turn to you Lindsay, and you have someone in Belize, you have someone in Guatemala. And then you turn to me, you drive me to the right advisors, even if it’s not an ILN member that we have, they are on our best friend list.

So ILN provides us a security net that internationally I’m supported, anywhere in the world I can find a reasonable advisor. And on the other hand, I very much appreciate the certain personal connections that I have with ILN members. And it’s always I’m interested in getting to know other people. And in most of the case it’s tax people because they have the same mindset that I have. But also I’m very happy to gather together, and to get together and to meet and get to know people from different countries, different jurisdictions with different mindsets. And all the gatherings that you organize are interesting. It is just the icing on the cake that we also receive a couple of mandates, but it is not any longer the most important part of our membership in the network.

Lindsay: That’s great. I love to hear that. I’m so glad. Well, thank you so much for joining us. I really appreciate your time today. And to all of our listeners, we’ll be back again next week with another guest and we look forward to talking to you all then. Thank you so much.

Pal: Thank you, Lindsay, it was my pleasure to speak to you

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Introduction

Conclusion

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