Just recently, Radu and I brought two staff writers on board – our first, after four years in business. Their names don’t appear in this issue, but you will start seeing them, we hope, pop up frequently in future issues. In the meantime, their bylines have already started appearing on the CEE Legal Matters website.
Their introduction and familiarization with the jargon of the business law firm world represents an education – both for them and for us. I find myself sympathizing with their struggle to understand why a firm with one office in CEE (but none in London) that calls itself “international” and which works in English and serves foreign clients does not fall within our definition of an “international” firm, but why a firm like Slaughter and May, which has no offices in CEE [see page 24], but does have an office in London, does.
I find myself reflecting back on my own initial confusion about the distinctions between “equity partners,” “partners,” “local partners,” and “salary partners,” let alone trying to reconcile those titles with those firms which prefer alternative descriptions, like “shareholder” or “principal,” or “director.”
Of course, that stuff is easy compared to making sense of “bookrunners,” “lead arrangers,” “syndicated financing,” “dual-tranch,” “minority squeeze-outs,” and the myriad other completely bewildering phrases to those trying to understand capital markets, financing, and corporate law.
Needless to say, our new writers also have to learn our own office vocabulary (including “pressies” and “TLS”), master our own systems, policies, and procedures, create their own contact lists, figure out the difference between a “Thought Leadership Account” and a “Knowledge Partnership” (and learn how to describe each to those who inquire about them), learn what Dealer’s Choice, the GC Summit, and the Balkan GC Summit are, and so much more. For the newest members of our team at CEE Legal Matters – smart, qualified, and determined to master the necessary skills as they are – the learning curve is steep.
[By the way, quick digression: you know what all those things are in the previous paragraph, right? If not, maybe you should contact us and give the newest members of the CEELM team an opportunity to describe them to you?]
In any event, it’s an ongoing process, for all of us. Daniel Boorstin once wrote that “education is learning what you didn’t even know you didn’t know,” and it turns out, it wasn’t just when we started that we didn’t even know we didn’t know a lot. Every day it turns out I learn things that I didn’t even know I didn’t know.
It is a pleasure for us to watch our new colleagues master the skills, language, jargon, understandings, and tools they need. Their arrival represents a significant step in our company’s growth, and we look forward to them educating our readers – and us – with news about developments in CEE’s legal markets in the years to come.
So welcome, Hilda Fleischer and Mayya Kelova. And … get back to work!
Oh, and yes: Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from me, Radu, and the whole team at CEE Legal Matters!
