Pro bono is a Latin phrase meaning “for the public good,” and, in the lawyering context, it refers to legal services provided free of charge, generally to indigent clients or charities or other public interest institutions unable to afford standard legal fees. The practice, which in its current form was developed first in Western legal markets, has seen a significant increase in recent years in CEE as well. Hungary is among the countries leading the way.

In The Corner Office we invite Managing Partners at law firms across the region to share information about their unique roles. The question this time around: What is your favorite question when interviewing a job applicant, and why?

Traveling the region on legal business I sense a lot of buzz surrounding law firms in CEE. Headline transactions are numerous and deal-pipelines appear to be well-fueled. With the tailwind of news about solid economic growth in the European Union there are good chances that this trend will last. The future for law firms in the region looks brighter than ever. But there are also challenges ahead of us as the legal industry, in CEE as everywhere else, is headed for some turbulent times. 

I received my law degree from the University of Virginia School of law, so you may not be surprised to learn that the interview I conducted with Polly Lawson, the Assistant Dean for Graduate Studies at that law school produced a flood of memories in me. What may be more surprising is how many of them are CEE-related.

At 30 years old, the Belarusian legal market is still relatively young. The end of the 1980s and early 1990s was a time of new economic relations; the first non-state companies appeared and the first foreign investors entered the market. These new economic conditions required lawyers focused on economic law, and soon the first Belarusian private law firms and individual practitioners appeared. Some of them (including the Law Laboratory, which was founded in 1990 by me and my colleague Natalia Kozyrenko and which later transformed into Vlasova and Partners) remain the “top dogs” on the Belarusian market today.  

The overall recovery of global economies and, specifically, growth in Europe, has had a direct impact on the legal markets of the Baltic countries.

Many of us have experienced such a scenario: It’s a beautiful summer. I’m on holiday in Austria. Even before the holiday began, it had become clear that I would have to interrupt it for a meeting in Berlin. When my wife asked me whether this would be the only interruption, I was convinced that I wouldn’t be away for more than one day. It turned out differently. After my return from Berlin, I had to leave our holiday home for another two days. The following week, in which I’d anticipated no business travel, I ended up spending only half a day of it with my family. I had to cancel common (and long-planned) visits of friends, two beautiful (and of course also already paid for) concerts in Salzburg, and I was either travelling for business or on the phone that whole week. 

The ancient Romans called the hottest, most humid days of summer “dog days” because they associated the hottest days of summer with the star Sirius – named the “Dog Star” because it was the brightest star in the Canis Major (Large Dog) constellation. Indeed, Sirius is so bright that the Romans believed it radiated extra heat toward Earth, adding to the Sun’s heat to generate those oppressive, sweltering summer days we know so well.

Slaughter and May and Wolf Theiss were the two Chairman Sponsors of the 2017 General Counsel Summit in Warsaw, and the individuals from both firms who actually chaired the proceedings – Jonathan Marks, Partner at Slaughter and May on Day 1 and Ron Given, Partner at Wolf Theiss on Day 2 – were kind enough to speak with us about their involvement at the event.

This year’s General Counsel Summit – the annual gathering of leading in-house counsel from across Central and Eastern Europe – convened in Warsaw, on June 1-2. 

The first two special issues of the CEE Legal Matters magazine this year – the annual Looking Back/Looking Forward issue in January and the CEE Corporate Counsel Handbook in April – were familiar to our readers. This one, however, dedicated to the 2017 CEE GC Summit and the CEE Legal Matters Market Makers Awards, is new.

Building upon the successes of the three past regional GC Summits in Budapest, Istanbul, and Warsaw, CEE Legal Matters is excited to be hosting the Hungary GC Summit – our first ever country-specific GC event. We sat down with the Chairman of the conference, Miklos Orban, Partner at Orban & Perlaki, to get his thoughts about the upcoming event. More information about the event itself can be found on the event website, here. 

As part of our year-long series of interviews with the bar associations presidents of CEE, we spoke recently with Maciej Bobrowicz, President of Poland’s National Council for Legal Advisors, at his office in Warsaw.

When I first moved to Poland about eight years ago from my native London I encountered a world different from the one where I had spent most of my life.

In The Corner Office, we invite Senior and Managing Partners at law firms from across the region to share information about their careers, management styles, and strategies. For this issue, we asked them to describe their least favorite part of their jobs. 

On April 4, 2017, the Hungarian Parliament passed via an expedited procedure an amendment to the country’s Higher Education Act (Act CCIV of 2011 on National Higher Education) requiring, among other things, that foreign universities not based in the EU: (1) operate under a formal agreement between their country of origin and the Hungarian government; and (2) maintain campuses and offer degree programs in their country of origin. It was signed into law on April 10, 2017.

Last year the Hungarian Ministry of Justice prepared a new Attorney Act that would radically re-structure the current regulatory approach to in-house counsel. GCs of leading companies in Hungary were given the opportunity to share their views in the process, giving them a rare occasion to pause and collectively consider the nature of this branch of the legal profession which in its few decades of existence has grown so much in significance.

“I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” – Michelangelo