Jurismus Germany organised a workshop to learn how to use balance sheets appropriately – a very useful tool when used skillfully!
Stephan Daubner (Busekist Winter & Partners EJ Germany) has been the head of his national Jurismus chapter for a while now, and he has organised a lot of workshops. “This is the last workshop I will set up,” he says, “because my mandate is over soon. It's a big project, but very exciting. We usually meet in a city where one of our members has an office, because they know the place very well and they can help find the right venue, a nice restaurant in which to meet in the evening, and add some affordable and special sightseeing activities. Then I book hotels, not too expensive because we want to be affordable for young lawyers who don't have a big budget to pay for accommodation themselves. I look around for speakers and mostly find them in my own personal network.” This is how German Jurismussers came to hear about balance sheets.
What is a balance sheet? “Every entity has to publish their results at the end of the year,” Stephan explains. “It doesn't matter how big you are, as long as you are a legal entity you have to produce one and make it available publicly. It is the same in every European country.” But why would this interest lawyers then? “Because balance sheets were created to give you an overview of what kind of shape this company is in. That's very important when you deal with a company!” Stephan told about precise cases: the personal liability of business owners, bankruptcy cases, or simply if you want to advise your customer before they sign a contract.
As with any other administrative document, balance sheets are technical and not always straightforward, which is why Stephan organised this meeting in the German town of Münster. “In Germany,” he says, “Lawyers usually do not learn about what it is, we do insolvency law but that's all. German lawyers are not trained in business administration. So I asked two accountants, including an old friend of mine, to come and teach us. The first day we learnt how to read balance sheets, and the second day we talked about how balance sheets are made. We were eighteen lawyers, including one who came from Italy just for this.”
Stephan's initiative is reminiscent of several past articles we have published: lawyers all around Europe stress the point that it is important to be more than a lawyer, to be able to understand many things that were not taught in law school. “Such workshops are very important,” concludes Stephan. “I never organised any workshops about legal topics, because we can find a lot of training for this elsewhere. But what I call 'soft skills', such as communication, marketing, anything not legal, these skills are definitely what we need to learn throughout such events. We have done workshops on all of these matters, and they were very useful. We learnt how to meet the expectations of the customers, which is very different from what you learn from the university!”
Do you agree with Stephan? Do you have a similar experience to share? Write us at journalist@eurojuris.net
