JUVE: Coaching Zone – Interview with A. Pohlmann
In the current June issue of the magazine JUVE Rechtsmarkt, our name partner Dr. Andreas Pohlmann provides information on how law firms themselves meet their compliance requirements. “We advise our clients on compliance and risk management. We show them how to deal with them,” says Pohlmann. “But with their own compliance and risk management requirements, law firms are often left with nothing.”
However, law firms would have to live with a specific contradiction: The claim of lawyers to exercise a liberal profession does not fit in with the need to control each other somehow for compliance reasons. For reasons of professional law, the compliance requirements that law firms would have to meet include in particular the examination of conflicts of interest. In addition, there are also regulations on the prevention of money laundering, data protection and reporting obligations with regard to cross-border tax arrangements.
The question as to what is and what is not compliant advice in individual cases is not always easy to answer. In this context, Andreas Pohlmann favours the dual control principle as a corrective: “One partner must inform the other of his concerns”. However – and this is the limitation – one naturally trusts one another, especially when dealing with very complex issues, according to the motto: He knows what he is doing.
Pohlmann & Company enjoys the privilege of a clear size with regard to possible mutual control. “In a smaller boutique firm like ours, a lot happens on demand,” he reports. Every Monday at 2 p.m., the eight partners sit together and discuss everything that is pending. However, the newer origin of the partnership is that it now takes greater account of risk and reputation than directly after its foundation eight years ago. “We are now looking more closely at the question of how we want to acquire and which mandates are strategically interesting for us – and not just for financial reasons.” After all, a law firm with a focus on compliance and risk management, which would be discredited for compliance reasons, would in his opinion be finished.
Read the article.