One of the American writers wrote: ”Never wish anybody to become an accountant or a lawyer”. We, however, state openly that we do like our job, which would not be possi-ble if we did not like, even a bit, our clients. We believe that this is one of the reasons why our clients manage to bear us for so long. We are honest that we are satisfied with this because we definitely prefer long-term relationships. Relatively seldom do we have one-time clients. Beginning a cooperation with a new client we warn, half joking, half seriously, that they should double-think the decision to cooperate with our Office be-cause if somebody decides on it they usually stay with us for many, many years.
When we were starting our business we were one of the first law offices using comput-ers. Nowadays we use all the most vital instruments which the market offers to lawyers, including several leading systems of legal information, as well as commercial data bases on participants of the market. We started our business making two land lines available to our clients. Nevertheless, we soon noticed that we should guarantee our clients the best possible comfort and a sure possibility to contact the lawyer. So in the time when many companies were bravely trying to deal with the business having one land line, we already had in our Office as many as 10 land lines. Even today, in the era of the fast Internet and digital phone connections, we believe that the time of a lawyer’s reaction is not only a technology, but first of all methodology and the system of values. We try to react promptly. Hopefully we are successful at it. In our opinion it is one of the condi-tions which we must meet in order to ensure our clients’ satisfaction. We still stick to the rule that each member of our team should speak English to the extent allowing them to provide legal assistance also in English.
Even before we set up our Office we had had to say farewell to a myth of a lawyer who is good at everything. Although a lawyer like that has undoubtful advantages, especially from the point of view of numerous clients who would rather contact just one lawyer, not a team, from the very beginning we have been aiming at specific fields of expertise. We wanted each of the lawyers working in our Office to specialise in a field which is particularly significant for our clients. There is a saying that a good journalist must know ”something about everything and everything about something”. In our opinion that rule should be applied also in the case of a good legal adviser who apart from his field of expertise should have knowledge of other sections of law at least to the extent allowing them to realise that in a given situation they must consult another specialist.
The world of lawyers, probably similarly to representatives of some other professions, may be divided into artists and craftsmen. Having worked for many years we notice with some pride that we have not become artists. Although sometimes we look with some envy at the colleagues who in our profession have reached the level at which they could be called artists, we are proud of our craft. Searching for an equivalent compari-son in another profession, we could compare ourselves to a carpenter who making a table maybe does not create an extraordinary masterpiece, charming his audience with a beauty of solutions and giving the viewers the feeling of transcendence. What we make is a good, stable, reliable table of a simple construction, at which people will be able to talk, eat and work also in twenty years time.
We have been constantly developing. We want to be ever better lawyers. The challenges which lawyers face due to constantly changing, and frequently unclear legal regulations, include the most important challenge and main objective of our Office, which is build-ing and maintaining trust between the client and his or her legal adviser. Although we could probably do it better, we try to follow the rule saying that the Client’s benefit is always the priority over the Office’s benefit. Certainly, respecting the Office’s right to a decent remuneration. If we talk about money, the Office for many years has been involved in numerous pro bono activities, as well as has been financially helping those in need.
© 2011 Żelaznowski & Głowiński. All rights reserved. Projekt i wykonanie: keithar.com, Paweł Jurek.
