A group of Eurojuris members held a conference in collaboration with legal advisors employed by banks. The aim was to show potential customers how Eurojuris members can match a big lawfirm.
Looking for more advice on how to create better partnerships between members, we go from practice groups to the International Business Group (IBG), a structure within Eurojuris. It includes Beat Eisner (EJ Switzerland), among others. Beat and his colleagues are very clear about the role they play in Eurojuris: “The IBG is not a rival group at all,” says Beat. “It's a knowledge group inside of Eurojuris. You are welcome as long as you perform some international activity. The major advantage of Eurojuris is the presence of practice groups. Congresses are great, of course; you meet a lot of people. But what is really interesting for a lawyer is to meet people who work in the same area. Practice groups themselves can really work on having good meetings together in order to get to know each other better and have contact with commercial partners”.
The IBG recently used this method to work on the Lugano Convention. What is it? “It is a convention that regulates the recognition of official documents and places of jurisdiction,” explains Beat. “It tells you which law is applicable, which jurisdiction, if it affects other countries, etc. Most countries involved in the convention are European.” After several meetings in Munich, Brussels, and Italy, Beat invited his fellow members of the IBG to Basel, Switzerland, for an event centred around the Lugano convention. “If you go to a Swiss bank and sign an agreement, for example, it is governed by Swiss law and the place of jurisdiction is Basel. If you are a consumer, you can later argue that some of the services were made in your country, thus it is your law and your court that will work. See the problem?” Beat's purpose was to offer a global answer to these questions: the group can be efficient as a team. “As a group of attorneys working closely together, if one has a problem he can come to one of us”.
This message was delivered to Beat’s guests: legal advisors. “We invited a dozen legal advisors who works for banks. What I wanted to tell them is: Eurojuris as a group of lawyers who can work together. You don't need to contact a big lawfirm; you can go to Eurojuris lawyers who have contacts throughout the IBG group and Eurojuris in general. And we can be just as successful”.
Before we leave Beat, we ask him for one last piece of advice: how to make such a group work? “You have plenty of contacts in your portfolio, because we lawyers always have the same kind of customers: international people who constantly need lawyers in countries other than theirs! So if you have a project such as this kind of meeting, use your client portfolio, see who they are and what they need”.
Do you want to tell us about your own experience? Drop a line at journalist@eurojuris.net
