CEE Legal Matters

Category: Submissions

  • CEE Legal Matters Deal of the Year Award Details

    Submissions are now being accepted for the 2024 CEE Deal of the Year Awards – the most prestigious peer-selected legal awards in Central and Eastern Europe.

    Explanation and Methodology

    Only deals that are formally submitted will be considered, and all submissions must be received by CEE Legal Matters on or before January 10, 2025. Submissions received by November 22, 2024, will receive feedback as to whether there is anything wrong with the submission so that they can be corrected. Those received after November 22 will only receive a confirmation receipt but will be simply discarded if they do not follow the guidelines. 

    Yes, there might be critical deals closed past November 22. If a firm exceeds the number of submissions allocated, we will reach out at the end of the year to any firms that have submitted more than that and ask them to pick which three of the submitted deals they’d like to put forward. Because of that, we encourage you to pick your top three deals and submit those before November 22, and should others come up, you can swap them out before January 10, 2025.

    As always, the editors and staff of CEE Legal Matters play no role in the evaluation of submissions or the selection of winners. Instead, submissions are exclusively evaluated by two panels of prominent lawyers from across the region – with members of the second and final panel forbidden from voting in markets where their firms are among the finalists.

    Those submissions that satisfy the mandatory criteria will be automatically forwarded to our Shortlist Panels, consisting of senior partners at leading firms and/or highly experienced and respected General Counsel in each CEE jurisdiction who have agreed to rank the submissions for complexity, size, and market significance. Their votes will be tabulated, and the resulting shortlists for each market in which a minimum of three deals were submitted will be announced on January 27, 2025. 

    The shortlisted submissions will then be forwarded to the Final Selection Committee, consisting of CEELM Knowledge Partners and select other legal experts from across the region, who will review and rank the finalists, leading to the final determination of the winner for each market.

    Previous Years’ Awards

    The CEE Deals of the Year Awards, recognizing the largest and most important deals in Central and Eastern Europe, were launched in 2017, with winners of the first DOTYs announced at the June 6, 2018, Deal of the Year Awards Banquet in Prague, and winners of the 2018 DOTYs announced at the March 28, 2019 Banquet in Budapest. The Covid-19 crisis forced the cancellation of two Deal of the Year Banquets, so winners of the 2019 awards were announced in the May, 2020 issue of the CEE Legal Matters magazine (here), and the 2020 awards were announced in the August, 2022 issue (here). The 2021 awards were announced at the 2022 Deal of the Year Awards Banquet in London and the winners are listed in the special June 2022 issue here. The 2022 awards were announced in April 2023 at an awards gala held in conjunction with the CEE General Counsel Summit and the winners are listed in the special June 2023 issue of the magazine here. In fact, all past winners are aggregated on the DOTY website here (the 2024 winners will be included as a separate entry soon).

    Submitting Deals: 

    Submissions must be made using this online form on or before January 10, 2025. Please Note: Submissions received after that date, or not submitted using the online form will not be considered. There is NO flexibility on deadline extensions – please do not write to ask. 

    Important Updates from previous DOTYs: 

    1. As of this year, we’re asking for client contact details. Those will purely be used for data validation purposes and are not shared with the voting ballots for consideration.
    2. Starting with 2023, we’ve introduced a rolling system of CEE Deal of the Year submissions to help firms avoid the stress of end-of-the-year deadlines. The cap of three submissions per firm per jurisdiction remains, so we will reach out at the end of the year to any firms that have submitted more than that and ask them to pick which three of the submitted deals they’d like to put forward. 
    3. As opposed to previous years, since 2023, eligibility of deals is determined based on the date of closing, not of signing. Only deals that were closed between January 1 and December 31, 2024, will be considered, without exception. Because of this change, some deals that were submitted for previous editions of the DOTYs might be eligible this year because of their closing, rather than signing date but deals that won a previous edition of the DOTYs are NOT eligible again for the jurisdiction(s) for which it was awarded the DOTY in the past. 

    Important Note – No Confidential Information or Confidential Deals:

    Please only submit information that is publicly disclosable. The information provided will be shared with the jurors so every bit of information included in your submissions will be considered as publishable, regardless of how it is marked. 

    Important Notes – On Counter-Parties:

    It is mandatory to identify other law firms advising on a submitted deal. Thus:

    • If you represented a buyer on a transaction, you *must* identify the advisor of the seller, and vice-versa (e.g., “X advised the seller”)
    • If you represented a borrower on a financing, you *must* identify the advisor of the lender, and vice-versa (e.g., “X advised the lender”)
    • If you advised on local matters only on a larger regional or global deal, you *must* identify the firms acting as global advisors, and vice-versa (e.g., “A acted as the global counsel for party B; C acted as the global counsel for party D”)
    • If the counter-party relied strictly on its in-house team please note that (e.g., “X relied on its in-house team”)

    Important Notes – On Submission Requirements:

    • Clients must be identified by name
    • Deals need to be closed between January 1, 2024, and December 31, 2024.
    • Disputes do not qualify for the Deal of the Year awards.

    2025 Deals of the Year Awards Banquet

    The 2024 CEE Deals of the Year Award winners will be announced at the 2025 CEE Deals of the Year Awards Banquet, scheduled in conjunction with the 2025 CEE General Counsel Summit, due to take place in Prague in Spring 2025. Further details are to be announced on January 10, 2025.

    The submissions online form includes all other relevant instructions but, if you have any questions please contact CEE Legal Matters’ Managing Editor, Radu Cotarcea, at radu.cotarcea@ceelm.com.
     
    Good luck, one and all! 
  • CEE Legal Matters Deal Table Details

    CEE Legal Matters Deal Table Details

    Each year CEE Legal Matters produces a table reflecting all reported law firm client matters across CEE in the previous year.

    Although the table is based primarily on the matters that we have reported on the CEE Legal Matters website throughout the year, we encourage firms to supplement that coverage with information about deals that may have fallen through the cracks.

    How to Submit Deals:

    Step 1: Please check the client matters we reported in your jurisdiction in 2023. The table here is searchable by country and includes all the deals we covered leading up to our November issue of the magazine (between January 1 and October 15, 2023) – if a particular client matter is already on this list, it will automatically be included in the annual end-of-year table. Do note that the table at the link above will not be updated in the upcoming months but all deals reported between October 16, 2023, and December 31, 2023, will also automatically be included so there is no need to submit them. If there is a client matter that is on that list but which does not include your firm’s involvement, please note your participation using this excel template.

    Step 2: Any client matters you worked on that are not included in the list at all should be noted on this excel template. NOTE: Make sure you use this one and this one only!

    Step 3: Submit both excel files to radu.cotarcea@ceelm.com with the subject line “CEELM Deal Submission_[Firm Name]” no later than December 4, 2023, for early submissions, and January 12, 2024, for regular submissions. We strongly encourage firms to make an early submission and supplement their submission after the year is closed with any new client matters concluded after their early submission. 

    If you complete your submission by December 4, 2023, you can expect feedback on potential errors in your submissions so that you may address them. Submissions received between December 4, 2023, and January 12, 2024, will only receive a confirmation of receipt, and any entries that do not respect the rules below will simply be excluded. The Table of Deals for 2023 will be published in our February special edition meaning that deadline extensions cannot be offered.

    Important Note – No Confidential Information or Confidential Deals:

    As opposed to previous years please only submit information that is publicly disclosable. The information provided will be plugged into the deal list automatically so every bit of information included in your submissions will be considered as publishable, regardless of how it is marked. 

    Important Note – On Counter-Parties:

    Unlike in previous years, it is now mandatory to identify other law firms advising on a client matter in the “Other Firms” column. Thus:

    • If you represented a buyer on a transaction, you *must* identify the advisor of the seller, and vice-versa (e.g., “X advised the seller”)
    • If you represented a borrower on a financing, you *must* identify the advisor of the lender, and vice-versa (e.g., “X advised the lender”)
    • If you advised on local matters only on a larger regional or global deal, you *must* identify the firms acting as global advisors, and vice-versa (e.g., “A acted as the global counsel for party B; C acted as the global counsel for party D”)
    • If the counter-party relied strictly on its in-house team please note that (e.g., “X relied on its in-house team”)

    Important Note – On Submission Requirements:

    • Clients must be identified by name
    • Client matters need to be concluded between January 1, 2023, and December 31, 2023. We need the specific month to be identified in the “Closing Date” column. Vague dates such as “Q1” will not be accepted.
    • *All* types of client matters, including disputes, can be included.
    • There is no minimum value threshold for a client matter to be eligible. Where the deal value can be provided, only use specific values (e.g., EUR 9 million). Vague indicators (such as, for example, “over EUR 10 million”) will simply be removed.
    • In the “Description,” make sure you clearly articulate your firm’s role in the deal or dispute.

    Important Note – On Feedback & Following the Template Provided:

    We will not be able to provide any feedback for submissions received after December 4, 2023, and submissions that do not follow the template will not be included in the deal list. 

    The following are examples of flaws in the submissions that will result in the entire submission being rejected:

    • The client is not identified.
    • Vague dates such as “Q1” are provided for the closing date.
    • The “Other Firms” column is not filled in.

    Although we are trying to notify each individual office of this Open Call and these guidelines, it might be a good idea to share this announcement with your colleagues in other jurisdictions as well, to ensure that all your deals, throughout CEE, are captured. 

    Please do not hesitate to reach out to us if you have any questions related to this. We look forward to your submission!

    Radu Cotarcea | Managing Editor | radu.cotarcea@ceelm.com