Interview with: Stelios Americanos, Managing Partner

What do you see as the main points that differentiate Stelios Americanos & Co LLC from your competitors?

Our Law Firm as a team has showed increased level of soft skills, apart from legal skills, for which we receive heartwarming feedback from our clients. Empathy, Honesty, Responsiveness, and business-oriented thinking are the main points that are being highlighted by our clients and other colleagues with whom we cooperate.

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

Following the crises that took place the recent months (pandemic, crises in Belarus, Israel, Palestine, Brexit, etc), people’s focus has shifted to subjects, countries and industries with more stability while others have seen opportunities to expand their businesses to more socially, financially, medically developed countries. Furthermore, established businesses have also been asking a lot about green energy, tokenization of real estate, lending through blockchain and mining. Taking those factors in consideration, our departments that we expect to see growing are Corporate & Commercial, and Blockchain & Innovation

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

During work from home and restrictions period our main concern was to not lose touch with our team, colleagues, and clients. For this reason, we quickly deployed a series of internal and external webinars, and discussions regarding different legal aspects that our law firm focuses on. Moreover, we dramatically increased our social presence with legal developments and newsletters that focused on informing the public about trending issues analyzed from a legal perspective.

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

The technology is changing the way we do everything, and we grasp every opportunity to automate and make our service provision and internal operations more efficient. It is without doubt that the pandemic boosted the adaption of technology to non-tech clients as well, regarding communication, meetings, online reviewing, signing of documents, sharing of data and consulting. We are now in the process of creating a moodle-like environment for our clients which will give access to their court folder through a unique code and which further include the arrangements with the lawyer, a memo, info of the lawyer, place of the data, and we will add features according to the needs.

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

It is in our culture to promote interdependence. To help our clients and make promote synergies between our clients if we see common ground of cooperation or reciprocal fulfilment of needs with breaking potentials while always taking in consideration the legal secrecy and information sensitivity. It is something that our clients want and that our clients are benefited from, which results in successful merges, acquisitions, funding of start-up companies and settling disputes.

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

Clients nowadays look far more that just a legal advice. They are looking for a business consultant as well, with a slight knowledge on tax matters, on corporate matters, on litigation matters and on wealth management matters. When a client comes to us, we act as a mentor whose success is determined by the success of the client. Of course, no one can know it all, that’s why we continuously expand our team increasing and adding diverse expertise in our team portfolio to better safeguard and promote the interests of our clients. Our short-term goals for the Law Firm are to minimize the carbon footprint, increase the workflow efficiency through technology, and maximize our clients’ and employees’ satisfaction and well-being.