I N T E R V I E W

Prof. Laurent Marliere, President of the European Legal Awards

 

Why a ceremony to reward lawyers in Europe ?

In most industries and sectors, committed companies and individuals are rewarded.

This acknowledgement of talent should not be reserved to the film or the music industry. Practicing law is an art. This Art should be recognized, as it is now the case in many countries.

What makes the European Legal Awards specific ?

(1) Truly European, (2) legitimate, (3) representative & (4) user friendly.

(1) Truly European: The law is following the globalisation of the economy. This has generated global law firms and in-house legal departments with offices and branches around the world. As well as these practices, domestic firms and in-house departments operate on merit with their local market, usually with non integrated international connections. It is important to see the picture as a whole. To be objective, one needs to assess both global firms, mainly qualified as “anglo-saxon firms”, and leading domestic firms of companies.

(2) Legitimate: Traditionally, award ceremonies were conducted by Publishing companies. They had found a way to promote their publications to professionals. This system is more and more contested and does not reflect the reality. Managing partners complaint. They regret the lack of seriousness or independence from judges, a high “commerciality” implying that firms have to buy advert spaces to be nominated, poor objectivity and loss of credibility.

Our objective is not to organize a funfair for lawyers with drums and trumpets. Our objective is to evaluate, reward and celebrate those with a proven excellence in providing legal services. Therefore, we have sought partnership from solid and incontestable institutions. They are the official representatives from the legal professions and from the business community. The tight cooperation we have developed with these organisations ensures a high standard of organisation and requires a high degree of independency.

(3) Representative : The Legal Awards are (a) professionally and (b) geographically horizontal.

(a) The business law community is not only composed of private practitioners. We want the Legal Awards to be a crossroad between the different legal practitioners : law firms, in-house departments,… General Counsels play an increasing role in the legal market. The cooperation needs to be adopted by all sides.

(b) If London or New-York based lawyers deserve to be rewarded, so do their Paris, Milano, Barcelona, Prague or Warsaw colleagues.

(4) User Friendly : Participants to the Legal Awards will not have to go through a bureaucratic process and unnecessary red tape to file an entry. The facilitated process allied to a jury made up of real connoisseurs of the market will avoid firms spending days justifying themselves.

These 4 specific criteria enable the Legal Awards to become THE place where real professionalism is acknowledged and … rewarded.

Do you plan to operate at a local level as well ?

Indeed. We operate on two levels: National Legal Awards and European Legal Awards. At first, the Legal-Awards will be present in all key “countries” to create a league table. In the close future, the objective is to have a National Legal Awards ceremony for all 25 countries of the EU.

This enables us to match the reality and specificity of the domestic legal markets. The European Legal Awards are pretty much like the “Champions’ League” where competition is limited to the very best firms/companies from all European countries.

What are the benefits to win an Award ?

Winning an award is a tremendous recognition valuable to your clients, prospects, colleagues, staff and yourselves ! Thanks to our Official partners and Media Partners, the Legal Awards are strongly labelled on an international scale. We ensure lawyers’ recognition “glocally”.

 

Laurent Marliere      President      European Legal Awards