What’s on the cards for big advocacy this year

Source: Lawyers & Business

Author’s Comments: JUDr. Ing. Miloš Olík, Ph.D., LL.M., FCIArb

1) What are your firm’s plans for 2022? What do you want to focus on?

2) How do you perceive the future of advocacy and consulting in general at this moment? What will clients require over the coming years? And what will be the key to success in consulting?

This year will clearly mean further growth for our firm – we see this happening on two levels, namely in further developing our existing specializations, teams and products, and in building new ones. Our greatest ambitions in this direction are in M&A and corporate, where we will shortly be announcing some major staffing changes – these will include bringing in a new experienced partner from outside the firm. Our aim is to build a top-notch team of 15-20 M&A specialists in the relatively short term, who will continue to work closely with our tax advisors. In IT and commercial law, we intend to build on our recent acquisitions of new colleagues from foreign offices and plan to further develop our specialist regulatory and compliance practice in addition to IT, IP, data and competition. Whistleblower protection will undoubtedly be a major theme in this respect, where we offer clients unique know-how and comprehensive LegalTech solutions. Our specialist litigation and arbitration team is also growing steadily, and at the turn of the year we managed to win several large arbitrations in addition to our usual litigation. In addition to this, we expect strong demand in the field of criminal law, as well as construction law, as real estate is one of our fastest growing specializations. Infrastructure, energy, water, waste and IT will be the primary areas we focus on in public projects, although we want to increasingly act on the side of private capital. I have also mentioned building new specializations or products, and here the Green Deal and related areas will be our main focus. We want to build on our existing expertise in environmental protection and, within this newly established group at our office, offer clients what we value most – concentrated cutting-edge know-how, a balanced pro-business approach and a comprehensive service that goes beyond law. We plan to say more about this in the second half of this year. However, in addition to growth and new specializations and people, we want to and will focus on continuously improving conditions for our current colleagues. Among other things, we are very proud of the fact that, even without applying table quotas, we have been able to rapidly increase our number of female legal colleagues through an open approach. Where appropriate, we are following the path of flexible working hours and a relatively high degree of individualization of the overall set-up. The new generation of lawyers in particular obviously wants this, but it already helps us to maintain cooperation with, for example, colleagues on maternity leave.

The full article can be found in the print edition of Lawyers & Business Monthly, Issues 1-2 2022. The article is in Czech only.

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