Event Report

The Legal 500 partnered with PwC, Kochanski & Partners, Eversheds Sutherland and CMS to host the inaugural GC Summit: Central & Eastern Europe in Warsaw on 23rd May 2019.

While it is true that in-house counsel around the world are bound together by common challenges and experiences, precise, relevant and bespoke advice requires particular awareness of a specific regional context when supporting their businesses. Each respective industry sector and jurisdiction presents a unique sets of challenges – and it is those counsel who deal best with existing and emerging relevant threats that are truly among the in-house elite.

Evoking this principle as well as fulfilling The Legal 500’s goal of bringing in-house communities together around the world, we convened a summit involving some of the region’s top legal minds in the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) region. Here, these challenges and opportunities were dissected and examined in front of an audience of approximately 90 people, in the form of four in-depth panel discussions and relaxed networking in Warsaw’s Sofitel Victoria.

The first of the event’s panel discussions was hosted by PwC, and it saw the challenges related to data protection and cyber security in the CEE region discussed in detail. Moderated by Gerard Karp of PwC, panellists grappled with the predominant themes on this topic from the point of view of both private practice and in-house lawyers based in CEE, including Michał Kaczorowski of Google, who provided insights related to his company’s experience and response to these challenges.

Kochanski & Partners hosted the second panel, which was moderated by the Managing Director of anicecupoftea.pl Anthony Goltz. This panel saw participants speak of the consequences of advances in legal technology and what these mean for in-house lawyers and for the practice of law. Panellists exchanged some heated debate regarding the future of the lawyer – or ‘Lawyer 2.0’ – including the panellists own personal experiences on the challenges involved with changes in technology all throughout the legal industry. Suggestions as to the advice in-house counsel should offer their businesses amidst growing scrutiny by the news media on these topics were also heard by the audience.

The third panel was hosted by Eversheds Sutherland, and the discussion – moderated by Eversheds’ head of dispute resolution in Poland Maciej Jóźwiak – centred on the subject of alternative dispute resolutions. Insights were brought from the perspective of experienced in-house counsel as well as Eversheds own private practice lawyers, and a healthy amount of debate surrounding the utility of various ADR methods and their applicability took place. Highlights including real life examples and each practitioners usage of them, all of which were discussed in detail by the panel.

Rounding off the day’s events was the fourth and final panel, hosted by CMS and moderated by the firm’s Partner and Head of White Collar Crime Arkadiusz Korzeniewski, which covered another of the region’s most pertinent in-house topics – investigations. With panellists including in-house lawyers from international companies, approaches and real-life examples of investigations with particular focus on self-reporting and whistleblowing were discussed in depth, along with a healthy amount of comment and debate from our audience.

The Legal 500 would like to thank all those who attended as well as our partners for this event: PwC, Kochanski & Partners, Eversheds Sutherland and CMS. A special thanks goes to the expert moderators and panellists, whose contributions and insights made the event a valuable experience for all attendees.

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