LEGAL UPDATES

Establishing a Swiss IP Company

The Grüninger Hunziker Roth Rechtsanwälte firm, our LAW member in Switzerland, has posted an article to the LAW Web site on the benefits of establishing a Swiss-based Intellectual Property company. If a company or group has significant revenues from licensing intellectual property assets either to subsidiaries or to third parties, a Swiss-based IP Company can save both time and taxes. To read the article, visit the LAW Web site.

For further information, contact:

• Dr. Roger Cadosch (Tax) at rogercadosch@ghr.ch or
• Michael A. Meer (IP/IT) at michaelmeer@ghr.ch.

UPCOMING MEETINGS

Asia Pacific Regional Meeting

May 5-7, 2005 is the date for the LAW Asia Pacific Regional Meeting in Hong Kong. The meeting, which will be held at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, will include a Doing Business in China presentation with a number of speakers. The meeting will start with a reception and dinner on Thursday, May 5, 2005, followed by an all day meeting on Friday, dinner at the Jumbo Floating Restaurant Friday evening, and a half day meeting on Saturday.

Accompanying persons will have the opportunity on Friday to go to Lantau Island to see the Buddha Statue and have a veggie lunch at the Monastery. The Asia Pacific Meeting will be followed by optional activities of horseracing on Saturday afternoon and dinner at the peak on Saturday evening.

Other LAW Meetings

• Americas Regional Meeting in Lima, Peru, April 7-9, 2005.
• European Regional Meeting in Tallinn, Estonia, June 2-4, 2005.
• LAW Annual General Meeting, Toronto, Canada, October 20-23, 2005.

For further information, contact Hallie Mann at halliemann@schmidt-marketing.com.

CHAIRMAN'S CORNER

THE IMPORTANCE OF WEBSITES

The telephone rings (or your computer alerts you to an incoming e-mail). It is [Mr. Client] or [Ms. Very Good Prospective Client] contacting you to let you know about a new and exciting project that their company is about to embark upon. To your delight (because you belong to a fine international association of independent law firms like LAW), you hear your client describe a bold new business venture that will require legal assistance from your firm as well as close coordination with local counsel in [Jurisdiction X], the site where the new business will be launched. Because of your “international capabilities,” you are also asked for suggestions on local counsel in [Jurisdiction X] who could work effectively with you to accomplish this very important project for the client. You are thrilled to be able to come up with an immediate, excellent recommendation of a fine firm whose partners you have met and who you know have the necessary expertise and responsiveness to get the job done promptly and efficiently. You proudly and confidently recommend [LAW Member X] and provide your client with some preliminary details on the firm, inviting your client to check the firm out further on the LAW website – Member Firm Page – as well as [LAW Member X’s] own website. You are feeling pretty good at this point about your membership in LAW and how it has helped your firm to impress your client and to obtain a new assignment.

About 15 minutes later the client calls back and says that he/she checked out [LAW Member X’s] Member Firm Page on the LAW website and it apparently says nothing about the field of expertise needed for this assignment. Moreover, the client says that he/she tried repeatedly to locate [LAW Member X’s] own website, but discovered that [LAW Member X] doesn’t even have a website. Your sophisticated client advises you that this is much too important a project to place in the hands of a law firm that, in this day and age of electronic communications, doesn’t even have its own website, so the client wants you to work with another firm that has been recommended by the company’s outside accountants. You are not feeling so good at this point about your excellent international legal connections, and you are worried that your own judgment and advice may be viewed differently in the future by your client.

The situation described above has happened to me and to other members in LAW. (My apologies to Bill Savarino of Cohen & Mohr, Washington, D.C., for borrowing heavily--without advance permission--from a recent experience that he shared with me.)

The scenario represented by this story is not one which any of us would want to experience or to repeat. That is why your Executive Committee, at its most recent meeting, approved an upgrade in LAW’s Service Standards, which now provide:

“…each member firm commits to provide excellent legal services in accordance with the following uniform service standards.”

Provide and maintain the following technologies:

• Website where permitted by local law and ethical standards, including prominent reference to LAW membership, with a link to the LAW website.”

The Executive Committee was advised that out of our 74 current LAW members, 15 firms (20%) do not have their own websites! Additionally, the websites of 27 of our member firms (36%) do not contain any reference to their membership in Lawyers Associated Worldwide. These statistics are very discouraging and troublesome to the Executive Committee. That is why we adopted the change noted above in our Service Standards.

The leadership of this organization firmly believes that it is important in the year 2005 for each member firm to have its own website and for that website to contain a prominent reference to LAW and a link to the LAW website. The cost of website construction is much lower than it once was, and Bill Savarino, the new Chair of the Web Task Force, will be contacting all of our members who do not have websites to assist them to develop one (unless they are prohibited from having a website by local law or bar association rules).

Member firms without websites will be expected to show substantial progress toward construction of their sites by June 30, 2005, and all member firms will be expected to have fully functioning websites in place by the Toronto AGM this October.

We make it clear to prospective new LAW members as part of our recruitment process that they must comply with our Service Standards in order to be accepted for membership. The Service Standards also apply to “old” members, and they need to be adhered to by all of us if we are to position Lawyers Associated Worldwide as a first-class organization in which we are all proud to be members.

If you’ve been thinking about creating that website, now is the time for action. You might also want to take a look at your Member Firm Page on the LAW website to see what needs to be updated.

Please give Bill Savarino your cooperation and your support when he contacts you. Your website can become a tremendous asset for your firm, and it will help us to improve the overall stature of Lawyers Associated Worldwide.

Sincerely,

Christopher C. McCracken
ULMER & BERNE LLP
Cleveland, Ohio USA

MEMBER ANNOUNCEMENTS

San Antonio LAW Contact Goes In-house

Donna McElroy of Cox Smith Matthews Incorporated, the LAW member in San Antonio, Texas, reports that Stephen D. Seidel has left the firm to join Kinetic Concepts, Inc. as General Counsel. Good luck, Steve!

Major Acquisition in the Philippines

Zambrano and Gruba Law Offices, our LAW member in Manila, Philippines, is pleased to report that recently, acting in behalf of several foreign companies, the firm closed an acquisition of a 200 hectare (US $20 million) resort and leisure complex located in Central Philippines. The acquisition was the result of an extensive due diligence and negotiation process which lasted for eight months. This transaction is one of the significant investments in the local economic zone and is expected to generate growth through increased infrastructure and jobs. For more information, contact Angelo Patrick Advincula at angelo.advincula@zglaw.com.

Personnel Changes in Peru

Berninzon, Loret de Mola & Benavides, Abogados, the LAW member in Lima, Perú and host of the 2005 Americas Regional Meeting, has a number of personnel announcements. The following associates have become partners of the firm effective January 1, 2005:

• Adriana Barrera. Adriana is the Head of the Intellectual Property Department of the Firm. She is a graduate of the University of Lima and has an LLM from Franklin Pierce Law Center.
• Guillermo Hesse. Guillermo is the head of the litigation practice group. He is a graduate of the Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru Law School.
• Giorgio Albertini. Giorgio is one of the top corporate counsels of the firm. He is a graduate of the Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru Law School.

In addition, Edgardo Portaro joined the corporate practice group of the firm effective March of 2005. Edgardo is a graduate of the University of Lima with an LLM from Duke University Law School. Before joining the firm, he was legal counsel for Edegel, the biggest private power generation company in Peru and one of the top-ten companies by revenues and profits in the country. For further information, contact Eduardo Benavides at eduardobenavides@blmblegal.com.

FEATURED MEMBER

Estudio Juridico Strunz Partners With Other Law Firms to Serve Clients in Argentina

In the last year, Estudio Juridico Strunz, the LAW member in Buenos Aires, has worked with law firms around the world on matters involving Argentina. The first involved a firm in Madrid, Spain, whose client decided to acquire a company established and registered according to Argentine legislation. Lawyers from Estudio Juridico Strunz met the foreign client and accompanied him to the city of Cordoba (770 kilometers from Buenos Aires) so he could visit the facilities of the company to be acquired, checking on its operation, staff, managers, etc. The firm was asked to conduct the due diligence prior to the purchase of the company. Once the company was acquired, Estudio Juridico Strunz was appointed as the company’s attorneys in Argentina, entrusted with the corporate books as well as the appointment of a new Board of Directors and new attorneys representing the Spanish shareholders in Argentina. The firm was also instructed to revoke all the powers of attorney conveyed upon the former attorneys, and to ask for the resignation of the former Board of Directors of the company.

Once the corporate books were regularized and the new Board of Directors was appointed, the firm helped changed the corporate organizational form of the acquired company into another form of business provided by Argentine legislation, which was successfully completed by the end of December 2004. Later, the firm continued overseeing the corporate books belonging to the new company. The success of the acquisition and subsequent company is due in large part to the cooperation between the law firm in Madrid and Estudio Juridico Strunz in Argentina, as well as the assistance of the correspondent lawyer in Cordoba.

In 2004, the firm was also contacted by the Lattanzi Law Firm (Shawn Coulson) in Italy, Atitech S.P.A.’s legal representatives (a company member of the Alitalia group), in order to apply for the proof of claims of Atitech about the composition of creditors of the Argentine airline, Aerolineas Argentinas. That request was carried out by the firm in less than a week, together with the Italian law firm. Then Estudio Juridico Strunz undertook to control the judicial record and to negotiate the claim, which Atitech S.P.A. finally obtained after long and hard negotiations carried out by the firm’s lawyers in Argentina.

Finally, with clients in the business of cells and batteries, Estudio Juridico Strunz is cooperating with Paraguayan deputies and senators and, generally, with the Mercosur (the economic community comprised of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay) to implement a bill banning the importation and trade of cells and batteries containing intentionally-added mercury. The bill has been approved by the House of Deputies and the Senate has implicitly agreed to it in Argentina. Members of the firm will attend the 10th International Congress for Battery Recycling in June, to be held in Spain.

Estudio Juridico Strunz believes that interaction among law firms in different countries is very important. In addition, the firm has a number of correspondents in different provinces of Argentina, who meet in the city of Buenos Aires every three years.

Estudio Juridico Strunz has developed a publication on “Doing Business in Argentina,” which can be found on the firm’s Web site at: www.strunz.com.ar/strunzen/index.htm. For further information on Estudio Juridico Strunz, contact Susana Strunz at ss.estudio@strunz.com.ar.

COMMITTEE MEETING SCHEDULE

Executive Committee

The next Executive Committee meeting will be held on April 19 at 12:00 GMT.