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Ece Gursoy is the Chief Legal Officer of Lightsource Renewable Energy Limited, a leading renewable energy developer in the UK. Prior to Lightsource, Gursoy practiced with Dentons in London and White & Case in Istanbul, specializing in Project Finance, Infrastructure, Energy and Privatization. Gursoy is admitted to the Law Society of England and Wales and the Istanbul Bar Association. She holds a LL.M. degree in Corporate and Commercial law from the University of London and a Ph.D. in European Competition Law and Economics from King’s College London. 

 CEELM: You have a team of 18 lawyers working under you at Lightsource – including 3 Turkish lawyers. And you yourself are Turkish. Why so many Turkish lawyers? Do you have any other non-English lawyers working under you?

E.G.: The Turkish-qualified lawyers in my team are uniquely positioned to excel in the in-house system. They graduated in the top three of their Turkish law schools and also have outstanding academic backgrounds from prominent UK universities. The advantage that Turkish lawyers have is that their professional experience has given them a broad range of legal focus, as opposed to the English system which produces lawyers strictly specialized in certain areas of law. I find that this is more suitable for an in-house legal environment with cross-specialty demands. The fact that I have worked in two jurisdictions also makes me easily approachable to Turkish lawyers. Additionally, we have five UK-qualified solicitors in our team, three dual-qualified with French, Turkish and Irish qualifications alongside their UK qualifications, and three Australian, one Malaysian, one Spanish, and two New Zealand qualified lawyers. 

 CEELM: You’ve expressed dissatisfaction with the rigidity of law firms and the flexibility of (and business elements in) your role with Lightsource. Is there something you think law firms could or should do differently to become more attractive to lawyers like you in the future, or is that simply an unavoidable element of a major international law firm?

E.G.: It is a cliché but it is really important for a law firm to understand the needs of their client’s business, particularly if the assignment is not a one-off big project, but a series of projects in a given sector – as it usually is in Lightsource’s case. In my opinion, if a law firm wants to appear more attractive to its existing or prospective clients it is very important for them to offer centralized external legal support with sufficient resources.

In our business model, our projects are comprised of energy, regulatory, property, planning, construction, mergers and acquisition, and other specific finance structure aspects and we have an average pipeline of 40-65 projects in a given year. In order to achieve such ambitious targets on an ongoing basis, we need centralized external legal support as opposed to shopping around to each and every department of a law firm to complete a project. Strict specialization in various areas of law in a law firm usually causes disrupted communication between departments and affects the end result of the project itself, particularly in matters involving more than one aspect of law. Such miscommunication between departments also increases the hours that external lawyers charge in a given deal. 

Law firms should also avoid putting their clients in the position of having to act as a middleman between separate departments of the same law firm specializing in different areas of law. One may argue that smaller boutique firms would have such capability due their size. However, the size of the law firm should not be an excuse – particularly for those clients in the energy and infrastructure sectors, as they seek fully-functional law firms with sufficient capacity. As such, one point of contact should be able to put together pieces of advice by assessing the full picture of a given project in order to provide the most efficient legal support to the client.

Another point that law firms should pay attention to is the internal management and allocation of proper resources (both in quantity and appointing the right level of expertise). These are as important as providing quality advice. The client should not be involved in or affected by the internal management of the external legal team. 

I believe as long as law firms are able to provide a seamless service by creating efficient project teams with sufficient resources and with one client contact to run high-volume and deadline-sensitive projects, they will appear attractive to clients like Lightsource.

 CEELM: You’ve also mentioned that, in your current position with Lightsource, you work the same kind of long hours as you did at the major law firms you’ve worked at before. Do you expect that to change over time – as the company itself becomes more established and your ability to delegate work to others grows – or is that fundamentally the nature of the role?

E.G.: It is the nature of the job and the company I’m afraid. I started alone in the legal team and built a team of 23 people within two years’ time. Lightsource has grown significantly in parallel over the past three years and has become the leading utility scale solar power generator in the UK. The sector itself is driven by very strict regulatory deadlines. If you want to benefit from the higher government incentives, you need to make sure that your projects are completed by the given deadline. In addition to such strict deadlines, if you have ambitious targets like acquiring, developing and constructing 300MW solar plants in a given year (it is 550MW for the year of 2014), you end up working on 20 different projects at the same time in a given month and completing at least 8-10 projects amongst them. Each year refinancing of the existing projects and management of the existing assets and fund structure are added on top of the development business. This accumulation creates significant ongoing business volume and you end up working the same kind of long hours as in private practice in addition to feeling the pressure and responsibility of the business. 

Delegation is key and I have therefore established a fully functional legal team comprised of property, construction, corporate, and finance departments, all capable of working on various aspects of these projects. However, as the team leader I still need to steer the group in the right direction and supervise the projects day-to-day by considering the big picture and the Company’s global targets.

Lightsource may be a special case, however, private practitioners considering jumping ship to become in-house lawyers should bear in mind that in-house positions also demand constant long hours and heavy project volume. Being part of the business and involved in first-hand commercial decisions and seeing the results of their legal advice are also other appealing features of an in-house counsel role. However, not all lawyers really want to expose themselves to a first-hand decision making process and be directly liable for their decisions , without the overarching umbrella protection of a law firm or the supervisory protection of a partner.

 CEELM: You come from a Project Finance background, but in your current role you work on everything from Real Estate to Regulatory to Share Purchasing Agreements to Operation and Maintenance Contracts, and much more. Do you find yourself enjoying some of these kinds of work more than others? Why is that?

E.G.: It is true that I am working in my current role in various aspects of law rather than focusing on PFI and renewables construction work that I was brought up with in private practice. Lightsource offers a lot of challenging structures due to its unique business model. 

The job itself is intellectually challenging and all of the projects are different, so there is always room for surprise. Due to the particularities of the funding structures and the changing nature of the regulatory environment, you need to come up with new legal structures to meet the needs of the business and keep achieving your targets, which requires involvement in various aspects of law – from property law to corporate law and from construction law to finance law. 

I personally find this mixture very appealing and I must say even though I still like working on construction finance and acquisition of sites through various acquisition structures and negotiating EPC contracts, I also enjoy working with my property colleagues on finding out the right route to point of connection for easements and wayleaves. In private practice, I never would have imagined that I would enjoy property work this much; it is like completing a jigsaw puzzle.

 CEELM: Do you get any personal satisfaction from working in a “green” company, or do you focus more on the day-to-day work and questions of profitability than on the bigger picture?

E.G.: Working in the renewables sector with the aim of achieving the renewable energy targets and structuring the “green” business in line with the changing energy policies of the government for sure gives a particular professional fulfillment. But I believe that in order to achieve the global targets of the renewable sector one should first focus on the targets of each sector player, and therefore I focus on the day-to-day business and profitability of the company. 

If the sector players do not achieve their own goals they cannot contribute to the greater good.

 CEELM: How would you describe your management style: More hands-on, or more laissez-faire? Do you provide trainings, or do you expect them to learn and grow on the job? Can you provide any useful/interesting examples of empowering or team-building activities you’ve instituted?

E.G.: I bet my team members would describe me as the former! For sure this does not mean that I do not delegate. If you have a team of 23 people like we have in Lightsource you cannot be personally involved in each and every piece of work delivered by the team. In order to steer the legal team in the right direction to achieve the company’s goals, I need to keep myself involved in the day-to-day workload of the team by staying in close contact with each team leader and by organizing weekly legal team meetings where we discuss all the matters that the team is working on.

While establishing various departments in the legal team I personally give significant importance on team-building activities. I have given and continue to give various presentations and case study workshops on the general principles of contract law, and especially on the EPC contracts (one the core areas of our business), to both our in-house legal team and our commercial teams to make them more aware of the needs and expectations of our business. 

In addition, every year we review the lessons learned the previous year and where necessary revise our template documents. I have also given and continue to give periodic presentations to non-lawyer members of the Lightsource team, especially to the development and delivery team of the Company who attend with the lawyers the negotiations of various contracts from commercial aspects, to make them more risk aware on basic principles of law. 

 CEELM: Finally, do you see yourself moving back to Turkey sometime, or are you in London for the long-term?

E.G.: For the moment there is still a lot to do at Lightsource, but no one knows what the future holds for us.

Ece Gursoy is the Chief Legal Officer of Lightsource Renewable Energy Limited, a leading renewable energy developer in the UK. Prior to Lightsource, Gursoy practiced with Dentons in London and White & Case in Istanbul, specializing in Project Finance, Infrastructure, Energy and Privatization. Gursoy is admitted to the Law Society of England and Wales and the Istanbul Bar Association. She holds a LL.M. degree in Corporate and Commercial law from the University of London and a Ph.D. in European Competition Law and Economics from King’s College London. 

 CEELM: You have a team of 18 lawyers working under you at Lightsource – including 3 Turkish lawyers. And you yourself are Turkish. Why so many Turkish lawyers? Do you have any other non-English lawyers working under you?

E.G.: The Turkish-qualified lawyers in my team are uniquely positioned to excel in the in-house system. They graduated in the top three of their Turkish law schools and also have outstanding academic backgrounds from prominent UK universities. The advantage that Turkish lawyers have is that their professional experience has given them a broad range of legal focus, as opposed to the English system which produces lawyers strictly specialized in certain areas of law. I find that this is more suitable for an in-house legal environment with cross-specialty demands. The fact that I have worked in two jurisdictions also makes me easily approachable to Turkish lawyers. Additionally, we have five UK-qualified solicitors in our team, three dual-qualified with French, Turkish and Irish qualifications alongside their UK qualifications, and three Australian, one Malaysian, one Spanish, and two New Zealand qualified lawyers. 

 CEELM: You’ve expressed dissatisfaction with the rigidity of law firms and the flexibility of (and business elements in) your role with Lightsource. Is there something you think law firms could or should do differently to become more attractive to lawyers like you in the future, or is that simply an unavoidable element of a major international law firm?

E.G.: It is a cliché but it is really important for a law firm to understand the needs of their client’s business, particularly if the assignment is not a one-off big project, but a series of projects in a given sector – as it usually is in Lightsource’s case. In my opinion, if a law firm wants to appear more attractive to its existing or prospective clients it is very important for them to offer centralized external legal support with sufficient resources.

In our business model, our projects are comprised of energy, regulatory, property, planning, construction, mergers and acquisition, and other specific finance structure aspects and we have an average pipeline of 40-65 projects in a given year. In order to achieve such ambitious targets on an ongoing basis, we need centralized external legal support as opposed to shopping around to each and every department of a law firm to complete a project. Strict specialization in various areas of law in a law firm usually causes disrupted communication between departments and affects the end result of the project itself, particularly in matters involving more than one aspect of law. Such miscommunication between departments also increases the hours that external lawyers charge in a given deal. 

Law firms should also avoid putting their clients in the position of having to act as a middleman between separate departments of the same law firm specializing in different areas of law. One may argue that smaller boutique firms would have such capability due their size. However, the size of the law firm should not be an excuse – particularly for those clients in the energy and infrastructure sectors, as they seek fully-functional law firms with sufficient capacity. As such, one point of contact should be able to put together pieces of advice by assessing the full picture of a given project in order to provide the most efficient legal support to the client.

Another point that law firms should pay attention to is the internal management and allocation of proper resources (both in quantity and appointing the right level of expertise). These are as important as providing quality advice. The client should not be involved in or affected by the internal management of the external legal team. 

I believe as long as law firms are able to provide a seamless service by creating efficient project teams with sufficient resources and with one client contact to run high-volume and deadline-sensitive projects, they will appear attractive to clients like Lightsource.

 CEELM: You’ve also mentioned that, in your current position with Lightsource, you work the same kind of long hours as you did at the major law firms you’ve worked at before. Do you expect that to change over time – as the company itself becomes more established and your ability to delegate work to others grows – or is that fundamentally the nature of the role?

E.G.: It is the nature of the job and the company I’m afraid. I started alone in the legal team and built a team of 23 people within two years’ time. Lightsource has grown significantly in parallel over the past three years and has become the leading utility scale solar power generator in the UK. The sector itself is driven by very strict regulatory deadlines. If you want to benefit from the higher government incentives, you need to make sure that your projects are completed by the given deadline. In addition to such strict deadlines, if you have ambitious targets like acquiring, developing and constructing 300MW solar plants in a given year (it is 550MW for the year of 2014), you end up working on 20 different projects at the same time in a given month and completing at least 8-10 projects amongst them. Each year refinancing of the existing projects and management of the existing assets and fund structure are added on top of the development business. This accumulation creates significant ongoing business volume and you end up working the same kind of long hours as in private practice in addition to feeling the pressure and responsibility of the business. 

Delegation is key and I have therefore established a fully functional legal team comprised of property, construction, corporate, and finance departments, all capable of working on various aspects of these projects. However, as the team leader I still need to steer the group in the right direction and supervise the projects day-to-day by considering the big picture and the Company’s global targets.

Lightsource may be a special case, however, private practitioners considering jumping ship to become in-house lawyers should bear in mind that in-house positions also demand constant long hours and heavy project volume. Being part of the business and involved in first-hand commercial decisions and seeing the results of their legal advice are also other appealing features of an in-house counsel role. However, not all lawyers really want to expose themselves to a first-hand decision making process and be directly liable for their decisions , without the overarching umbrella protection of a law firm or the supervisory protection of a partner.

 CEELM: You come from a Project Finance background, but in your current role you work on everything from Real Estate to Regulatory to Share Purchasing Agreements to Operation and Maintenance Contracts, and much more. Do you find yourself enjoying some of these kinds of work more than others? Why is that?

E.G.: It is true that I am working in my current role in various aspects of law rather than focusing on PFI and renewables construction work that I was brought up with in private practice. Lightsource offers a lot of challenging structures due to its unique business model. 

The job itself is intellectually challenging and all of the projects are different, so there is always room for surprise. Due to the particularities of the funding structures and the changing nature of the regulatory environment, you need to come up with new legal structures to meet the needs of the business and keep achieving your targets, which requires involvement in various aspects of law – from property law to corporate law and from construction law to finance law. 

I personally find this mixture very appealing and I must say even though I still like working on construction finance and acquisition of sites through various acquisition structures and negotiating EPC contracts, I also enjoy working with my property colleagues on finding out the right route to point of connection for easements and wayleaves. In private practice, I never would have imagined that I would enjoy property work this much; it is like completing a jigsaw puzzle.

 CEELM: Do you get any personal satisfaction from working in a “green” company, or do you focus more on the day-to-day work and questions of profitability than on the bigger picture?

E.G.: Working in the renewables sector with the aim of achieving the renewable energy targets and structuring the “green” business in line with the changing energy policies of the government for sure gives a particular professional fulfillment. But I believe that in order to achieve the global targets of the renewable sector one should first focus on the targets of each sector player, and therefore I focus on the day-to-day business and profitability of the company. 

If the sector players do not achieve their own goals they cannot contribute to the greater good.

 CEELM: How would you describe your management style: More hands-on, or more laissez-faire? Do you provide trainings, or do you expect them to learn and grow on the job? Can you provide any useful/interesting examples of empowering or team-building activities you’ve instituted?

E.G.: I bet my team members would describe me as the former! For sure this does not mean that I do not delegate. If you have a team of 23 people like we have in Lightsource you cannot be personally involved in each and every piece of work delivered by the team. In order to steer the legal team in the right direction to achieve the company’s goals, I need to keep myself involved in the day-to-day workload of the team by staying in close contact with each team leader and by organizing weekly legal team meetings where we discuss all the matters that the team is working on.

While establishing various departments in the legal team I personally give significant importance on team-building activities. I have given and continue to give various presentations and case study workshops on the general principles of contract law, and especially on the EPC contracts (one the core areas of our business), to both our in-house legal team and our commercial teams to make them more aware of the needs and expectations of our business. 

In addition, every year we review the lessons learned the previous year and where necessary revise our template documents. I have also given and continue to give periodic presentations to non-lawyer members of the Lightsource team, especially to the development and delivery team of the Company who attend with the lawyers the negotiations of various contracts from commercial aspects, to make them more risk aware on basic principles of law. 

 CEELM: Finally, do you see yourself moving back to Turkey sometime, or are you in London for the long-term?

E.G.: For the moment there is still a lot to do at Lightsource, but no one knows what the future holds for us.

Ece Gursoy is the Chief Legal Officer of Lightsource Renewable Energy Limited, a leading renewable energy developer in the UK. Prior to Lightsource, Gursoy practiced with Dentons in London and White & Case in Istanbul, specializing in Project Finance, Infrastructure, Energy and Privatization. Gursoy is admitted to the Law Society of England and Wales and the Istanbul Bar Association. She holds a LL.M. degree in Corporate and Commercial law from the University of London and a Ph.D. in European Competition Law and Economics from King’s College London. 

 CEELM: You have a team of 18 lawyers working under you at Lightsource – including 3 Turkish lawyers. And you yourself are Turkish. Why so many Turkish lawyers? Do you have any other non-English lawyers working under you?

E.G.: The Turkish-qualified lawyers in my team are uniquely positioned to excel in the in-house system. They graduated in the top three of their Turkish law schools and also have outstanding academic backgrounds from prominent UK universities. The advantage that Turkish lawyers have is that their professional experience has given them a broad range of legal focus, as opposed to the English system which produces lawyers strictly specialized in certain areas of law. I find that this is more suitable for an in-house legal environment with cross-specialty demands. The fact that I have worked in two jurisdictions also makes me easily approachable to Turkish lawyers. Additionally, we have five UK-qualified solicitors in our team, three dual-qualified with French, Turkish and Irish qualifications alongside their UK qualifications, and three Australian, one Malaysian, one Spanish, and two New Zealand qualified lawyers. 

 CEELM: You’ve expressed dissatisfaction with the rigidity of law firms and the flexibility of (and business elements in) your role with Lightsource. Is there something you think law firms could or should do differently to become more attractive to lawyers like you in the future, or is that simply an unavoidable element of a major international law firm?

E.G.: It is a cliché but it is really important for a law firm to understand the needs of their client’s business, particularly if the assignment is not a one-off big project, but a series of projects in a given sector – as it usually is in Lightsource’s case. In my opinion, if a law firm wants to appear more attractive to its existing or prospective clients it is very important for them to offer centralized external legal support with sufficient resources.

In our business model, our projects are comprised of energy, regulatory, property, planning, construction, mergers and acquisition, and other specific finance structure aspects and we have an average pipeline of 40-65 projects in a given year. In order to achieve such ambitious targets on an ongoing basis, we need centralized external legal support as opposed to shopping around to each and every department of a law firm to complete a project. Strict specialization in various areas of law in a law firm usually causes disrupted communication between departments and affects the end result of the project itself, particularly in matters involving more than one aspect of law. Such miscommunication between departments also increases the hours that external lawyers charge in a given deal. 

Law firms should also avoid putting their clients in the position of having to act as a middleman between separate departments of the same law firm specializing in different areas of law. One may argue that smaller boutique firms would have such capability due their size. However, the size of the law firm should not be an excuse – particularly for those clients in the energy and infrastructure sectors, as they seek fully-functional law firms with sufficient capacity. As such, one point of contact should be able to put together pieces of advice by assessing the full picture of a given project in order to provide the most efficient legal support to the client.

Another point that law firms should pay attention to is the internal management and allocation of proper resources (both in quantity and appointing the right level of expertise). These are as important as providing quality advice. The client should not be involved in or affected by the internal management of the external legal team. 

I believe as long as law firms are able to provide a seamless service by creating efficient project teams with sufficient resources and with one client contact to run high-volume and deadline-sensitive projects, they will appear attractive to clients like Lightsource.

 CEELM: You’ve also mentioned that, in your current position with Lightsource, you work the same kind of long hours as you did at the major law firms you’ve worked at before. Do you expect that to change over time – as the company itself becomes more established and your ability to delegate work to others grows – or is that fundamentally the nature of the role?

E.G.: It is the nature of the job and the company I’m afraid. I started alone in the legal team and built a team of 23 people within two years’ time. Lightsource has grown significantly in parallel over the past three years and has become the leading utility scale solar power generator in the UK. The sector itself is driven by very strict regulatory deadlines. If you want to benefit from the higher government incentives, you need to make sure that your projects are completed by the given deadline. In addition to such strict deadlines, if you have ambitious targets like acquiring, developing and constructing 300MW solar plants in a given year (it is 550MW for the year of 2014), you end up working on 20 different projects at the same time in a given month and completing at least 8-10 projects amongst them. Each year refinancing of the existing projects and management of the existing assets and fund structure are added on top of the development business. This accumulation creates significant ongoing business volume and you end up working the same kind of long hours as in private practice in addition to feeling the pressure and responsibility of the business. 

Delegation is key and I have therefore established a fully functional legal team comprised of property, construction, corporate, and finance departments, all capable of working on various aspects of these projects. However, as the team leader I still need to steer the group in the right direction and supervise the projects day-to-day by considering the big picture and the Company’s global targets.

Lightsource may be a special case, however, private practitioners considering jumping ship to become in-house lawyers should bear in mind that in-house positions also demand constant long hours and heavy project volume. Being part of the business and involved in first-hand commercial decisions and seeing the results of their legal advice are also other appealing features of an in-house counsel role. However, not all lawyers really want to expose themselves to a first-hand decision making process and be directly liable for their decisions , without the overarching umbrella protection of a law firm or the supervisory protection of a partner.

 CEELM: You come from a Project Finance background, but in your current role you work on everything from Real Estate to Regulatory to Share Purchasing Agreements to Operation and Maintenance Contracts, and much more. Do you find yourself enjoying some of these kinds of work more than others? Why is that?

E.G.: It is true that I am working in my current role in various aspects of law rather than focusing on PFI and renewables construction work that I was brought up with in private practice. Lightsource offers a lot of challenging structures due to its unique business model. 

The job itself is intellectually challenging and all of the projects are different, so there is always room for surprise. Due to the particularities of the funding structures and the changing nature of the regulatory environment, you need to come up with new legal structures to meet the needs of the business and keep achieving your targets, which requires involvement in various aspects of law – from property law to corporate law and from construction law to finance law. 

I personally find this mixture very appealing and I must say even though I still like working on construction finance and acquisition of sites through various acquisition structures and negotiating EPC contracts, I also enjoy working with my property colleagues on finding out the right route to point of connection for easements and wayleaves. In private practice, I never would have imagined that I would enjoy property work this much; it is like completing a jigsaw puzzle.

 CEELM: Do you get any personal satisfaction from working in a “green” company, or do you focus more on the day-to-day work and questions of profitability than on the bigger picture?

E.G.: Working in the renewables sector with the aim of achieving the renewable energy targets and structuring the “green” business in line with the changing energy policies of the government for sure gives a particular professional fulfillment. But I believe that in order to achieve the global targets of the renewable sector one should first focus on the targets of each sector player, and therefore I focus on the day-to-day business and profitability of the company. 

If the sector players do not achieve their own goals they cannot contribute to the greater good.

 CEELM: How would you describe your management style: More hands-on, or more laissez-faire? Do you provide trainings, or do you expect them to learn and grow on the job? Can you provide any useful/interesting examples of empowering or team-building activities you’ve instituted?

E.G.: I bet my team members would describe me as the former! For sure this does not mean that I do not delegate. If you have a team of 23 people like we have in Lightsource you cannot be personally involved in each and every piece of work delivered by the team. In order to steer the legal team in the right direction to achieve the company’s goals, I need to keep myself involved in the day-to-day workload of the team by staying in close contact with each team leader and by organizing weekly legal team meetings where we discuss all the matters that the team is working on.

While establishing various departments in the legal team I personally give significant importance on team-building activities. I have given and continue to give various presentations and case study workshops on the general principles of contract law, and especially on the EPC contracts (one the core areas of our business), to both our in-house legal team and our commercial teams to make them more aware of the needs and expectations of our business. 

In addition, every year we review the lessons learned the previous year and where necessary revise our template documents. I have also given and continue to give periodic presentations to non-lawyer members of the Lightsource team, especially to the development and delivery team of the Company who attend with the lawyers the negotiations of various contracts from commercial aspects, to make them more risk aware on basic principles of law. 

 CEELM: Finally, do you see yourself moving back to Turkey sometime, or are you in London for the long-term?

E.G.: For the moment there is still a lot to do at Lightsource, but no one knows what the future holds for us.

Any lawyer seeking to enhance his or her academic knowledge in a specific field of law  would start by considering LL.M. program offerings around the world. These LL.M. programs (Legum Magister – Master of Laws) were once nothing more than a second phase of degree programs in national law in countries in which degrees in law were divided into a Bachelor level and a Master level, as the system of legal higher education traditionally is in common law countries. But today the term “LL.M.” has become a universally-recognized label for programs (usually) focusing on international law and designed for students who already hold degrees in law from their home country.

The most comprehensive Internet site on this matter (www.llm-guide.com) currently lists 261 such programs in continental Europe, 112 in the UK and Ireland, 159 in the USA, 106 in Asia, and more around the world. While in common law countries – and to some extent in those European countries following the Bologna system – LL.M. programs continue to be a means for further specialization in national law, most programs in Europe focus on international law in a variety of fields and invite applicants from all over the world. Since these programs usually involve the payment of tuition, they significantly contribute to the income of universities even amidst recession, when state funding is decreasing. And when in 2009-2010 the LL.M. program in European and International Business Law was introduced in Hungary, a comparative study showed that tuition for one-year LL.M. programs in Europe without state subsidies typically varied between EUR 6,000 – 12,000, but more specialized programs (e.g. in Intellectual Property Law, Real Estate Law, Corporate and Finance Law, etc.) could easily cost between EUR 16,000 – 30,000. The most expensive LL.M. program that year was EUR 45,000.

Since legal higher education in Hungary remained an undivided five-year undergraduate master of laws program, the introduction of accredited LL.M. programs in Hungary was not inevitable. Before 2010, LL.M. programs in Hungary were either accredited as Master-level programs abroad but not in Hungary (Central European University, for instance, offered a number of LL.M. programs in Budapest that were accredited as Master-level programs in New York, but only as a specialized legal certificate programs in Hungary), or were offered in cooperation with other universities in the EU (Szeged University offered an LL.M. in Comparative and International Business Law, for instance, in cooperation with the University Jean Moulin Lyon III from France, with French accreditation), or were not accredited at all (the LL.M. Vergleichende Staats-und-Rechtswissenschaften program of Andrassy Gyula Deutschsprachige Universitat, Budapest, was accredited only as a specialized legal training certificate program).

In 2009 I approached Dean Prof. Miklos Kiraly of the ELTE University Faculty of Law in Budapest to propose that the concept of LL.M. programs be introduced into the traditional system of legal higher education and a program be created in European and International Business Law. Hungarian law faculties simply can not miss out the opportunities of an expanding market of post-graduate legal higher education worldwide. Professor Kiraly welcomed the idea, and after about two years of preparation, in October 2011 the Hungarian Accreditation Committee passed a resolution incorporating an LL.M. in European and International Business Law program with nationally unified features (including the subjects to be taught, the number of semesters, credit numbers, teaching hours, entry requirements, level of degree, etc.) into the list of Master-level programs available for Hungarian universities to offer. Hungarian law faculties may now apply to register this program, if they can demonstrate that their institution satisfied a number of strict requirements relating to teaching staff, infrastructure, language competence, etc. To date, law faculties of four institutions have successfully completed the registration process, including ELTE, the University of Pecs, the University of Debrecen, and the Karoli Gaspar University of the Reformed Church in Hungary. 

The introduction of the LL.M. in European and International Business Law program in the list of Master-level programs was not an easy task, as among other challenges, it required a number of changes in the law itself, starting with the Act on Higher Education. As degrees in law in Hungary are offered only on a Master level, the Act is incompatible with the Bologna model in which Master programs are based upon a degree on the Bachelor level. In the Bologna model, Master programs are recognized as entry requirements for PhD-level training, not for another master-level program. Thus, it was necessary for legislators to be persuaded to accept the concept of master-based programs in law.

Today the LL.M. in European and International Business Law program in Hungary is a two-semester English language program for applicants already holding a degree in law, requiring 60 credits at the minimum, focusing on internationally-unified European and business law. Between 3-6 credits are allocated to courses in the preliminary module, covering the bases of European economic integration (both from institutional and substantive perspectives), the bases of European legal harmonization, and an introduction into international business law. 

Another 25-30 credits are allocated to compulsory courses on the four freedoms of EU law,  European competition law,  international sale of goods, the international basis of state intervention in cross-border trade (from WTO-administered treaties to ICSID arbitration),  European and international intellectual property law,  international commercial arbitration,  and the harmonization of contract law. 

Another 16-20 credits are to be collected from optional courses on a variety of matters, such as European company law, European consumer law, social rights in the EU, mergers and acquisition in the EU, the case-law of the ECJ, specific forms of the settlement of disputes in international business; taxation in international trade; drafting legal documents used in international commerce in English, international commerce and telecommunications law, and many others. The remaining credits can be collected from the LL.M. thesis and optional courses and extra-curricular activities such as moot-courts.

The program has already shown itself capable of serving multiple purposes and appearing in multiple forms. ELTE University has offered it as a weekend course mostly for local practitioners. The University of Pecs has incorporated it into its regional CEEPUS program (Central European Exchange Programme for University Studies). The University of Debrecen is offering it both for locals and foreigners. And the Karoli Gaspar University is preparing to offer it as a full-time daily program targeting mostly foreign applicants.

In the three years since it has been introduced, the LL.M. program has proved to be successful and valuable, and it has in that short time become a critical component of Hungarian legal education.

Gabor Palasti is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law at the Karoli Gaspar University of the Reformed Church in Hungary and at the Riga Graduate School of Law in Latvia. He specializes in private international law and international business law. Throughout his career, he has worked with a number of international organizations (including UNIDROIT, WIPO, BIICL, IPR Verlag), and he has published a large number of articles and reports around the world. Palasti has recently taken a leading role in the creation of the first accredited LL.M. program in Hungary. We asked him to describe the program for our readers.

The Center for European Law & Economics has published its fifth annual Global Merger Control Index Report.

The study, meant to evaluate and compare merger review systems in various jurisdictions worldwide, collected data from leading merger control experts in each market. The processed data resulted in a weighed score for each country ranging from 7 (good) to 1 (poor) on 16 criteria: precise, concise, statically efficient, dynamically complete, predictable, timely, technically advanced, flexible, independent, unbiased, reliable, confidential, inclusive, resourced, transparent, and improving.

According to Ana Galus, Associate with Turcan Cazac, the firm that contributed to the research on Moldova, “the country’s score in the merger control index this year is of 4.38 out of 7, which is a fairly strong result. During the past years, the Moldovan merger control system underwent a significant reform – new legal provisions that intend to transpose the EU competition law relevant provisions were adopted. However, the Moldovan competition authority (the Competition Council) still has a long road ahead of it in order to establish best practices pursuant to the new legal framework. Overall, Moldova’s high merger control index reflects the high expectations invested by competition experts, including corporate/M&A counsels, in this merger review system that is at its beginnings.”

According to the results, the three countries in CEE with the most efficient overall review system were, in order: Hungary (5.47), Macedonia (5.44), and Turkey (5.13). These three scored higher than the EU average of 5.09. The countries that lagged behind were Poland (4.34), Ukraine (3.94), and Russia (3.84).

Believing that how one presents oneself to the world and making a good impression are key ingredients of success, CEE Legal Matters introduced the TopSite Award to encourage and reward those firms whose websites stand out in various ways. Websites are only one component of a firm’s reputation or brand, of course, but it is one that has grown increasingly important in recent years.

The web is a platform on which a firm can show its people, its history, its specialties, and the ways it is unique. Our awards focus not on what a firm’s website says as much as how it says it. Is the language of the English version of the site professional and polished? Does the site identify the firm’s legal staff, from partners through associates? Does it provide easy contact information for the firm itself and for its lawyers? Does it demonstrate leadership by sharing articles on practice areas and the important issues of the times? And, finally, to what degree does it stand out for ease of use, quality of content, level of detail, and a subjective Je ne sais quoi factor of creativity, originality, and communicated substance?

Faithful readers will remember that we select two Central and East European markets for each issue. This time around, we shine our CEELM TopSite spotlight on Romania and Serbia, and after studying many websites the editors found two outstanding sites in each of those markets that seemed to stand out, showing distinctive qualities that earned them spots as finalists for our award.

TopSite Award – Romania

Our two finalists from Romania were Nestor Nestor Diculescu Kingston Petersen (www.nndkp.ro) and Tuca Zbarcea & Asociatii (www.tuca.ro). Both sites manifested unique graphic design elements that were attention-getting while focusing that attention on the content they offered.  Both employed scrolling text to convey a dynamic sense of their practice and successes. Tuca Zbarcea ‘s red-themed home-page graphic conveys a sense of movement and energy. NNDKP’s green home page offers an artist’s paintbrush as an explicit metaphor linking accomplishments and style. NNDKP also invested in a humorous and compelling six-and-a-half minute cartoon video telling the history of the firm “in a nut shell.”

We awarded this issue’s TopSite honor among Romanian websites, ultimately, to NNDKP for the depth and richness of detail shown throughout the site. Balancing the light touch of the front-page video, every link offers an abundance of professional detail, effectively conveying breadth and substance.

NNDKP’s Director of Marketing and Business Development, Irina Melecciu, said a basic redesign of the site in 2008 was “a result of our brand audit and part of our brand identity fine tuning. We aimed at creating an online tool with relevant, complete and updated information that could express our values in a user-friendly way and clearly communicate the client benefits. We also believed it was essential to provide details about our teams of lawyers, integrated legal and tax services, practice and industry area expertise, while also offering useful legal updates, articles, and career insights with an online application and information about our international affiliations.” She said the firm felt “great joy in acknowledging the ‘TopSite Award’ from CEE Legal Matters, especially that it came from specialists highly experienced in providing top-notch, relevant editorial content to their readers in the region.”  (Thanks, Irina!)

Finalist Tuca Zbarcea’s site carries its quiet design principles from page to page as it presents its news, specialties, staff, and other links. Alina Pintica, the firm’s Chief Marketing and Communications Officer, said the site’s intention was to consolidate its branding strategy and to reinforce its core values of “professionalism, openness, performance, accessibility, friendliness. It was designed to provide interesting and well structured information in a user-friendly and interactive manner. While we knew that aesthetics came second, we were well aware of the fact that it had a major role in conveying the values that needed to be enforced by the web tool. We also aimed at implementing a visual interface that would, first of all, provide intuitive access to all information and instruments available on the website.”

TopSite Award – Serbia

CEELM’s two finalists from Serbia were Jankovic Popovic Mitic (www.jpm.rs) and Prica & Partners (www.pricapartners.com). The Prica & Partners site employs an eye-catching graphic to anchor a home page that stresses its theme of combining tradition with the future. The Jankovic Popovic Mitic site employs muted colors and consistent and artistic use of black-and-white photographs to call attention to its firm, areas of practice, and staff.

In our judgment Jankovic Popovic Mitic edged into first place for Serbia, demonstrating that speaking quietly – in this case, employing a cool and understated graphic theme – can be an effective communications device. Nemanja Stepanovic, the firm’s Managing Director, stressed that because the web site is the first point of contact for most of its existing and prospective clients, it “has to reflect our goals and business concept and the way we would like to be perceived by our clients. Therefore, we created a neutral site with a clean and modern feel, fully capable of providing all the information within a logical layout.” The design principle was modularity, she said, allowing ease of addition and modification, speedy loading, and optimized content across browsers and devices.

The Serbian-finalist site of Prica & Partners emphasizes its theme of tradition and the future by tracing the roots of the firm back to 1900, across generations of lawyers and forms of government. The graphic principle established on the home page – animation within various color banners – is used to convey a modern, future orientation in all sections of the site.

I would like to start with a few words of gratitude to CEE Legal Matters for offering me the opportunity to contribute to the Guest Editorial for the April issue. Last year was memorable in many ways, both for Egorov Puginsky Afanasiev & Partners (EPAM) and for me personally. It was a year of new discoveries and significant achievements.

Our Firm has reached the 20-year frontier in its history with a number of honours and awards bestowed by the Russian and international legal communities. We received awards from The Lawyer in three categories simultaneously: European Law Firm of the Year, Law Firm of the Year: Russia, and European Corporate Team of the Year. In the Pravo.ru-300 national rating, meanwhile, we increased our lead on the competition even more. And in 2014, we plan to go even further. The positive market trends and the Firm’s latest appointments will provide the drive for our next leap forward.

I feel very optimistic about the state of Russia’s legal market, which has matured and diversified despite significant geopolitical upheavals.

EPAM is increasingly focusing on the pressing international private and public law issues related to WTO accession, the tragic events in Ukraine, the de-offshorization of the economy, and changing tax legislation. For example, the events in Ukraine and the Crimea have given rise to a number of significant new risks for the global, Ukrainian, and Russian business communities, which have been forced to take extreme and painful measures. International economic sanctions aimed at a country’s business community do nothing to solve the challenges facing the world, and have a grave impact on global trade and foreign investments. 

The fact that the leading American trans-national corporations alone have amassed more than a trillion US dollars is a sign of the global crisis, with private companies around the world cutting or rethinking their investment models. It is also obvious that public law models for intergovernmental relations, including economic sanctions, are at odds with private law models for regulating international trade. I am convinced that similar legal and economic dilemmas will have an increasing impact in the future.

When it comes to the development of the legal market in Russia, we cannot ignore the ongoing changes in the judicial system. I am talking primarily about the consolidation of the two highest courts: the Supreme Commercial Court, which considers commercial and economic disputes between legal entities, and the Supreme Court, which mostly handles disputes between individuals. Last year, the Supreme Commercial Court of the Russian Federation also handed down a number of public and civil law precedents that became the focus of active discussion in the legal community. They were related to several principal changes in Russia’s Civil Code that address freedom of contract, and the principles of fair and rational application of civil rights. Along with e-justice, open discussions of draft legal positions shaping the country’s high courts have increased the level of trust in the Russian judicial system. Other pressing issues in the development of legal practice are precedents in bankruptcy cases involving legal entities, and the expansion of the set of tools to claim subsidiary liability against controlling parties, including direct owners whose actions have caused or facilitated their companies’ bankruptcies.

Another challenge facing our Firm – and our St. Petersburg office in particular – is the complexity of legal services required by the market. This demands attorneys with increasingly narrow fields of specialization combined with the skills needed to find the inter-sectorial solutions for their clients’ needs. As a rule, legal solutions for the most challenging client business needs – like the ones my colleagues and I deal with on a daily basis – lie in several different areas of law. We believe that these increased expectations give the few firms in Russia able to provide client-oriented solutions and a practical understanding of client needs a unique competitive edge on the legal services market, since the majority of firms in Russia  offer only  typical, standard services. I am positive that the complexity, difficulty, and inter-sectorial nature of our clients’ needs will only increase in the future.

I believe that the new challenges facing the legal market are related not only to the danger of economic slowdown and stagnation, but also to the danger of stagnation in the skills of attorneys who are not quick enough, or not eager enough, to change their modus operandi to fit the changing business world. Dynamism, openness to change and to new expectations, highly-developed knowledge, and a focus on the business goals of our clients have always been and will continue to be the key to success.

The transfer of Russia’s high courts to St. Petersburg that is scheduled for the next two years is also highly significant for lawyers in this market. Obviously, as the Supreme Court follows the Constitutional Court to St. Petersburg, this will provide a new impetus for the growth of the St. Petersburg legal market as a whole. The Firm is also closely watching the St. Petersburg International Legal Forum, an independent professional platform for legal professionals from across the world to engage in an open discussion of the most pressing and urgent issues of the day. 

This year, the Forum will be held in St. Petersburg from June 18-21, in the midst of the White Nights. I would like to take this opportunity to invite all my colleagues and CEE Legal Matters’ readers to take part in the event. I will be delighted to welcome you to our beautiful city!

For the second year in a row, Glikman Alvin & Partners has been identified by Salary TOP – a special edition of the Aripaev financial newspaper – as paying the highest salaries of any law firm in Estonia.

The firm paid its 27 lawyers and other employees an average of EUR 2,632 a month in 2012 – the year on which the rankings are based – ranking the firm 84th out of all 2,000 companies surveyed. The average pay in 2012 in Estonia, according to Salary TOP, was EUR 879.

The firm is pleased for the recognition. According to GAP Attorney Siim Magi, “We actually do take pride in it, because we desire to have the best people in our team. There are different elements in the reasons why people join one law firm or another, but let’s face it, salary is an important element, and we do believe that we have to pay well to get specialists.”

He emphasizes that the firm hasn’t set being the best payer as a specific goal, of course – Magi laughs that the award “also creates questions that maybe we’re paying too much,” but he’s confident. “As long as we’re happy with our profitability – and we are – then we think it’s all right.”

Salary TOP factored lawyers and non-lawyers alike into its calculation. Last year Glikman Alvin & Partners was ranked 25th among all Estonian companies, with an average salary of EUR 3,049 a month.

Belarus cannot be said to have an old Competition Law tradition. There is still no “landmark” Competition Law case in Belarus, and according to the statistics of the Competition Authority (the Pricing Policy Department of the Ministry of the Economy), the total amount of all Competition Law fines imposed in 2013 was just BYR 2.3 billion (approximately EUR 171,000). But there are a wide variety of norms of Competition Law that are contained in the Constitution of the Republic of Belarus; International Treaties that have been ratified by the Republic of Belarus; Presidential Edicts; the Belarus Civil Code; the Code of Administrative Offenses; the Criminal Code; and other antitrust laws and regulations for business and economic activities.

The new Competition Act is based on the provisions of the Treaty On Common Principles And Rules On Competition signed in the frameworks of CES on December 12, 2010, and defines the institutional and legal frames for the prevention, restriction, and suppression of monopolistic activity and unfair competition in order to ensure the necessary conditions for the establishment and effective functioning of commodity markets, the promotion and development of fair competition, and the protection of the rights and legitimate interests of consumers.

The most important development of the new Competition Act is the increased role of the Competition Authority and the extension of its powers. The full range of investigatory, enforcement, regulatory, and decision-making powers is granted to the Competition Authority and its officials. This should help them to react promptly and flexibly in any situation; the authority will have stronger investigative powers and will be able to set its own priorities in competition policy.

Another key new provision of the Competition Act is the imposition of new requirements and thresholds for merger control tests and the requirement of prior consent on concentration deals from the Competition Authority. At the moment only concentration deals involving more than 30% of market share, majority share deals of more more than 25%, or direct control are require the prior consent  of the Competition Authority. After July 1, 2014, however, additional factors, including balance sheet assets value (more than 100,000 base rates – approx. EUR 1 million) and annual revenue (more than 200,000 base rates – approx. EUR 2 million) will also be taken into  account.

Furthermore, the new Competition Act calls for a  more detailed determination of dominant position (commonly more than 35% market shares, but other more complex criteria can be applied) and actions treated as abuse of dominant position. At the same time, despite the application of other criteria, an entity cannot be treated as dominant if its market share does not exceed 15%, except for natural monopoly issues. Persons who according to the definition of the Competition Act are members of a group are exempted from obtaining prior consent on concentration deals, and need only notify the Competition Authority.

In order to harmonize the regulation of competition within the common market of the CES, new terminology was adopted by the Competition Act. Such terms as “vertical agreements”, “direct control”, “indirect control”, “economic concentration”, and “group of persons” are de jure in the new Competition Act. 

The Competition Act for the first time – in article 4 – directly proclaims its extraterritorial character, stating that its provisions apply also to all actions (or lack of action) of persons outside the territory of the Republic of Belarus, and that such activities can lead to prohibition, limitation, or elimination of competition in the  Belarusian market. This governs activity of all natural persons and legal entities, both residents and non-residents of Belarus. It is also applies to the residents of the Republic of Belarus, who participate in any deals outside Belarus which can influence competition, including actions with shares and other concentration activity.

The new Competition Act is a milestone in the history of Competition Law in Belarus. It should have a major impact on business in Belarus and, due to its extraterritorial provisions, also on foreigners doing business with Belarusian counterparts. Thus, it is crucial to make a full competition compliance review of current agreements and undertakings with Belarusian partners to avoid the risk of fines or other negative consequences. 

By Tatiana Ignatovskaya, Partner, and Maxim Nikolaev, Counsel, Stepanovski, Papakul & Partners

This Article was originally published in Issue 2 of the CEE Legal Matters Magazine. If you would like to receive a hard copy of the magazine, you can subscribe here.