Around The World with Seymour J. Mansfield

Legal News with an International Perspective

Seymour J. Mansfield
Founding Partner

LAWYERS ASSOCIATED WORLDWIDE:
“LAWYERS WITHOUT BORDERS”

Earlier this month, my partner Earl Cohen and I attended the 2010 Annual General Meeting (AGM) of Lawyers Associated Worldwide (LAW) in Istanbul, Turkey.

LAW is an association of 106 independent commercial law firms, with over 3500 lawyers in aggregate, located in 150 major commercial centers around the world. Each member firm has local expertise, useful contacts in the bar, business and government, and first-hand knowledge of the customs and practices in its own jurisdiction. All member firms adhere to the standard of excellence established by LAW’s service standards, the careful scrutiny use in recruiting and selecting member firms and the ongoing feedback from clients and other members as to specific matters undertaken by other member firms. LAW affords national and global coverage to each member firm’s clients outside their home jurisdictions, with responsive, competent and accountable legal representation wherever it is required.

These firms operate and interact as a worldwide network which can service clients’ needs as if they were major clients of a giant international law firm. In this way, our membership is just a phone call or an email away from responding to a client’s needs, whether they occur across state, provincial or country borders.

Specific benefits for our clients of our Firm’s membership in LAW include, for example:

• coordinating the legal representation of several firms in several countries to handle the client’s cross-border matters, such as cross-border mergers and acquisitions, cross-border insolvency proceedings and the like;
• handling international mediation, arbitration, litigation, enforcement of judgments, and protection of IP rights;
• looking for foreign investors or investor opportunities through inquiries to our LAW partners who represent or have networks of prospective investors and reputable sources of investment opportunities;
• assessing the legal/regulatory aspects of entering a new foreign market and how best to establish your presence there;
• helping clients to navigate the maze of export/import regulations;
• assisting in-house counsel in finding a local law firm to assist with particular transactions or litigation matters, and
• providing timely information as to changes in foreign law and regulatory environment via regular communications from our member firms.

At the AGM in Istanbul, Earl and I connected with many of 130 Meeting Delegates from 91 of the member firms attending, among them six new member firms admitted in 2010:

• Vicente Ugarte del Pino Abogados, Lima, Peru (36 lawyers)
• Lavan Legal, Perth, Australia (83 lawyers)
• Advocate Bureau Vegas Lex, Moscow, Russia (79 lawyers)
• Weinhold Legal, Prague, Czech Republic (32 lawyers)
• O.P. Khaitan & Co., Solicitors & Advocates, New Delhi, India (30 lawyers)
• DSK Legal, Mumbai, India (56 lawyers)
• Rigby Cooke Lawyers, Melbourne, Australia (35 lawyers)

and four observer firms considering LAW membership:

• AAA Advogados, Lisbon, Portugal (25 lawyers)
• Batalla Abogados, San José, Costa Rica (22 lawyers)
• Oostvogels Pfister Feyten, Luxembourg (40 lawyers)
• Travieso Evans Arria Rengel & Paz, Caracas, Venezuela (42 lawyers)

In networking with our fellow members, we learned a lot about their firms, their practice areas, their special niches of expertise, industry and governmental connections, and more importantly, what types of transactions their clients might be interested in here in Minnesota. We attend several informative sessions on building an alternative energy law practice; cross-border M&A; Public Private Partnerships (in countries where governmental owned industry was undergoing privatization); international franchising, and law firm practice management. We heard corporate general counsel’s view of top legal challenges and what general counsel looks for in hiring outside law firms. A panel of members then educated us on Business Opportunities in Africa.

In addition, we discussed how we can market law more effectively and a new LAW brochure was unveiled sporting the tag line: “You can find some of the best lawyers in the most unexpected places.”

At this year’s AGM, we dealt with internal governance matters, the members elected by acclimation their two top officers:

• Chairman - Bill Savarino, Cohen Mohr LLP, Washington, DC
• Vice Chairman – Brian Everett, Duthie Whyte, Auckland, New Zealand

both talented and dedicated leaders, who along with eleven other diverse and very capable members of LAW’s Executive Committee, are entrusted with the overall management of LAW. Dues were raised slightly and housekeeping amendments to LAW’s Articles were passed by delegates.

Membership meetings in 2011 were announced:

• Americas Regional Meeting in Montreal, Canada – hosted by Joli-Coeur Lacasse, (April - date TBD)
• Europe, Africa & Middle East Regional Meeting in Tel Aviv, Israel – hosted by David Soffer Law Offices (May 12th -14th)
• Asia Pacific Regional Meeting in Darwin, Australia – hosted by Ward Keller Lawyers (June 2nd – 4th)
• Annual General Meeting in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – hosted by Lacaz Martins, Halembeck, Pereira Neto, Gurevich & Schoueri (October 12th – 15th, Optional tour on October 16th)

We will be attending at least the Americas Meeting in Montreal and the AGM in Rio.

Our LAW membership is another component of our Firm’s emphasis on practicing “value added law.” LAW empowers our firm to serve the needs of our clients in domestic and foreign markets worldwide.

We take pride in not only providing the top quality legal services in the areas including business and real estate law, intellectual property, employment, labor and disability law, civil litigation and estate planning, but we also strive to do whatever we can from a non-legal perspective to help our clients succeed. Our “value added” ability to make connections and advise our clients globally advances that same goal.

Again in 2011, it is a top priority of mine, as well as Earl’s and my other partners, to better emphasize our LAW membership – and what it can do to benefit our clients. We will continue to feature in coming editions of this newsletter articles from some of our member firms regarding interesting issues or the changing legal landscape in a particular country. Finally, we always stand ready to inquire among our network partners if a client – or prospective client – is looking for an investor, investment opportunity, transaction partner or thinking of extending its reach or operational presences to foreign markets.

Our membership in LAW allows Mansfield Tanick & Cohen to offer worldwide legal services commensurate with much larger law firms, while at the same time preserving our abiding ethos to provide our clients with the attentive care and skilled lawyering at cost effective rates.

If you are in need of a competent attorney in another U.S. state or in another country, please contact any of the following Mansfield Tanick & Cohen attorneys:

Seymour J. Mansfield: smansfield@mansfieldtanick.com

Earl H. Cohen: ecohen@mansfieldtanick.com

Jeffrey C. O’Brien jobrien@mansfieldtanick.com

A founding shareholder of Mansfield Tanick & Cohen, P.A., with 41 years of diverse lawyer experience, Seymour Mansfield now focuses on business, complex and class litigation, mediation, executive employment and employee benefits, trade secrets and restrictive covenants, international business law and acts as legal counsel to emerging medical device companies. He is one of the firm's representatives to Lawyers Associated Worldwide (LAW) and served on LAW's Executive Committee (governing board) from 2002 through 2008. He can be reached at 800-4016-194 or via email at smansfield@mansfieldtanick.com.