Firm Profile > Legelata Law firm > Yerevan, Armenia

Gor Margaryan, Partner, Banking and Finance

What do you see as the main points that differentiate Legelata from your competitors?

Specialisation by legal practice; We at Legalata have decided that the temptation of being the “generalist” law firm is not worth the undergone benefits of sharp and sophisticated advice that we provide to our clients. We will remain a business law firm concentrated solely on the business related legal needs of our clients.

Specialisation by industry: We add further benefit of our specialty for our clients through our specialisation in the selected industries where we provide services to our clients. Legelata has been traditionally strong in a number of industries such as banking and finance, retail, real estate, construction, hospitality and entertainment, health and pharmaceuticals etc. We have added to our portfolio the IT sector recently through our IT practice led by best talent with support from technical experts in the field.

Legal Management:  We have decided to part with the traditional transactional based view lenses of a law firm and take a lead in identifying the legal issues our clients may face instead of waiting for a request for solution of a problem. Our pro-active approach has provided solutions to many issues and created enormous value for our clients.

Business Knowledge and Acumen: Being guided by the principle of “know your client”, we are strong believers in understanding the business of the client before we feel comfortable providing advice.We have added MBA knowledge to the team to be able to monitor the business processes of our clients and provide the relevant legal services matching the strategy and operations of the clients on a one stop-shop basis.

Which practices do you see growing in the next 12 months? What are the drivers behind that?

With the positive outlook for economic growth in the region overall, we believe the hospitality and entertainment industries will lead the growth. Retail industry is seeing new spaces added in the growing city while banks and financial institutions aggressively fund the businesses amid the low interest rates. Intellectual property practice to our opinion will see considerable growth due to the increasing GDP output of software products, technology transfer and licensing arrangements.

What’s the main change you’ve made in the firm that will benefit clients?

We have introduced training program giving MBA skills to our legal team for understanding the business of our clients and sharpen the business acumen. While an independent law firm, we are progressing towards building an intimate business model with our clients where we simply become part of our clients operations in efficiently addressing their legal needs on pre-emptive basis. Through our close involvement we deliver our messages to the decision makers and enable them to make legally smart decisions.

Is technology changing the way you interact with your clients, and the services you can provide them?

In fact it would have not been possible to build out customer intimate business model without technology. Not only the technology gives us opportunity to monitor the business processes but also to deliver our service in the most convenient way to our clients.

An example would be the use of technology to run the enormous contractual portfolio of a big multinational client operating in a dozen of countries and wishing to have centralised decision taking point in the headquarters without undergoing the flexibility and use of the knowledge on the ground.

Through technology we are also able to build and standardise the risk management, legal and compliance portfolios and departments within our clients and provide real time management data on legal and risk related matters.

Can you give us a practical example of how you have helped a client to add value to their business?

We add value to our clients’ businesses every day. A recent example of a strategic advice through our legal management practice would be our recommendation to the board of a multinational involved in manufacturing of ready and processed foods to dispense with development of a new product due to the anticipated change in regulations. Asset specific investments worth millions in USD would have been made to develop the new product which would be a sunk cost due to changing regulatory landscape of an economic union.

We are also proud in our ability of bringing polished negotiation skills and intercultural knowledge in any cross-border mergers and acquisitions (or any other transaction for that matter) deal. Our recent advice to the client has helped to bring the stakeholders with different interests together for concluding a multi-million dollar acquisition which would have fallen away otherwise.

Are clients looking for stability and strategic direction from their law firms – where do you see the firm in three years’ time?

We are positioning the firm in three different directions:

First, it is the intimate business model that we are building through the use of technology, business knowledge and acumen. This will translate into large corporate clients benefiting from low legal costs and yet systematic and pro-active legal solutions which will prove strategic in the long run of the businesses.

Secondly, we are transgressing the national borders through fostering not only our eco-system of partners in different jurisdictions but also establishing our own foreign desks with first one being in UAE.  Meantime, with the accumulated knowledge and network in the country and in the wider region we are able to provide such legal and “know how” advice to our clients which greatly contributes to overcoming the liability of foreignness and protect ex ante the investments to be made.

Last, but not least, we see horizontal integration with finance and accounting practices to further be able to provide our clients more bespoke and strategic solutions on complex needs in the business. Likewise, our use of technology and data analytics should contribute to the success of our clients in their business.