THE LAWYER AS A BUSINESS PARTNER

Damyana Lazarova is one of the founding Partners at the leading Bulgarian law firm CasePro and also the Head of Legal for the European division of the fastest-growing worldwide POS company – SumUp. Damyana has been a practicing lawyer for the past 18 years and through her excellence and experience has been ranked amongst the leading Corporate and M&A lawyers by the prestigious international edition "Legal 500". Damyana is a member of the Sofia Bar Association, The International Bar Association (IBA), The Corporate and M&A Law Committee, and Law Firm Management Committee. She is an author of legal articles in the field of M&A and Fin-Tech, a speaker at numerous conferences, and a lecturer at the Sofia University and the American University in Bulgaria (AUBG).

We are discussing with Damyana some topics around the trends in the legal industry, clients’ expectations, teams’ priorities, and women in leadership roles.

The legal industry is considered to be a relatively conservative one and you have been operating within it for some time – have you observed any changes in the recent years? What constitutes the "modern" lawyers nowadays?

Like many other industries nowadays, the legal industry is also subject to rapid changes and the clients' expectations increase each day, because they need to trust smart, responsive, creative, and adaptive lawyers. We aim to constantly improve and develop a team that can better respond to the needs of the business.

Clients have become more apprehensive, partially because of what has been going on in the world during the past 2 years and the huge uncertainty, but also because of the speed at which they need to work. They face the necessity to be fast and creative to be competitive, to make instant decisions, but also to reasonably mitigate risks and mistakes. For a lawyer to be trusted, he/she should be able to act as a real business partner and have a deep understanding of the client’s business and its driving force. Lawyers should be approachable, proactive, and provide ready-made solutions, leaving aside the approach for narrowing their advice to the associated legal risks only.

A huge role is played by legal technology and its smart and appropriate integration with human services. This is a key factor that law firms will need to pay more and more attention to in order to suitably respond to their clients’ needs and to ensure maximum time optimisation, better collaboration, and transparency.

Last but not least, the billing practices in law firms need to adjust and develop. Lawyers should be able to demonstrate a high level of efficiency of their service delivery while putting in place the right mechanisms for clients' control and monitoring.

What qualities make for the "best lawyers" from the perspective of the employer?

This depends on the employers’ vision. The differences in the approach of the employers gives candidates the opportunity to find their best fit. To me, the "best lawyer" is the one who contributes to a healthy organization – a place where people feel confident and happy to develop their capabilities while supporting each other and caring for the results that they deliver. Guiding the firm based on these values, my partners and I have been trying to build a team where we trust each other and enjoy what we do. Therefore, we have always looked to potential candidates from a slightly different angle. Of course, it is great if the candidates have a solid academic background and a high level of expertise, but we share the point of view that building knowledge is easier than building values. We love candidates who are smart and empathic, eager to learn and develop, and motivated to work as part of a "real" team, candidates who are emotionally mature to be able to take responsibility for their decisions and actions. Like many other firms we base our recruitment campaigns on a particular open position corresponding to our current needs, but frequently in practice what we’ve seen happen is that we decide to open the "right position" for a particular candidate, instead of trying to shape someone to match a predefined role.

Do you have a lot of women in your team?

We have 25 people in our team, in fact men and women are almost 50:50 and we have achieved that in a very natural way. Women are great lawyers just like men are. Everyone is unique and has his/her own role. We've always been open to people who share our values and understand the company culture we’re trying to promote. We do not encourage competition among our team members and have never supported any advantages based on gender.

Have you established strong working processes in your law firm?

Not really. We have an incredible team of talented and smart lawyers, who are truly committed to developing and delivering the highest quality of service. Working with such people is a privilege and it’s quite easy. I believe that bureaucracy can be lowered significantly where people are self-disciplined enough and we stand to prove this as an organisation. I believe that it’s only possible in relatively small organisations, where people know and trust each other to a higher degree.

Do you face challenges in retaining talent? What is the leaders' role in the maintenance of the working environment?

Of course, leaders have a complex role in retaining talent. I would say they have a huge responsibility to create an environment where people feel supported and inspired. I recently read somewhere that a good leader is one who is trusted and followed by smart people, who always have the freedom not to follow him/her. That says it all.

We are more than lucky that our team has stayed with us for many years, and it just gets bigger in time. Some of our colleagues have been with us for more than 7-8 years. We have become a family!

Recently, many people and especially young ones are often speaking about burnout syndrome. What do you think, and have you experienced that yourself?

I've spent some time analysing the "burnout concept" and in short, I think that burnout does not come solely from workload, nor from complex, time and efforts consuming projects. Nevertheless, it is possible that it arises when despite huge efforts one does not see the meaning, the reason behind all this, part of which relates to lack of confidence, fear of failure, and lack of enough support, trust, and recognition from the surrounding environment.

Burnout could also come when there is a huge gap between expectations and results. I think that is also very relevant for all challenges we face outside of our job and career development. When you lose direction and motivation, this is the point when you become vulnerable and more exposed to burnout. I think we all have come across such situations, so I am endeavouring to be disciplined and thoughtful in timely assessing my own and my team's capabilities and expectations, and then carefully setting goals that turn to the main driver of efforts. Mental health just like physical one is critical and both individuals and organizations should make it a top priority.

Is it at all possible to be a woman who is a great leader with a great career and a great mother at the same time? How do you manage to find balance?

First, I've been trying to admit to myself that in fact, it is not. But I also think that it is not possible to be always great even if you choose only one of the above. I am also allowing myself to put in the effort and try my best even though I will not be so great. Learning to start from this point made my life easier.

Of course, this is a very individual choice that women should make for themselves. At present the dynamic environment we live in requires each of us to adapt and be flexible in finding a way to deal with a lot of important matters. At the same time, as women, do we really have to give up something dear to us or do it at half capacity, because we want to be good at something else as well?

I personally have always strongly felt the need to be 100% devoted to each of the roles I have chosen, and I would not feel good to compromise on any of the fields I've decided to take on. I know that from first glance, mathematically, that does not make much sense and I've been struggling to find a solution for myself for a long time. It was hard because I knew I would never accept applying 40:60 or 50:50 or any other ratio to those roles that matter to me. Then I realised that 100% devotion does not mean 100% achieving your goals, or 100% of your time, neither of your thoughts nor of your happiness or personal satisfaction. I understood that quality is not always measured in quantity. This is for sure a difficult task to solve, and it takes efforts to think more, to gather experience, to let yourself feel lost, to analyse and see what would work for yourself. Then suddenly you understand that maybe the key is to learn how to optimise, to act smart, to organise your life, to assess time and situations you should push hard on something, to set but also to be able to quickly change priorities, to do more with less. And most importantly, I realise that you could eventually achieve that only if you accept that you will not be perfect all the time, forgive yourself some mistakes, and not allow others to project their unreasonable expectations on you.

I am not saying I am an expert at all, I am often struggling with short-term goals and sometimes can feel insecure, but I believe I am learning each day and getting better. I truly believe that it is about a strong desire and will and that a strong commitment is an approach that one can apply to many things. I have observed that people who are really good in certain fields are actually capable of being good in many other areas, because of this same approach. And I might be of course wrong, but my feeling is that people feel happier when they can express themselves in different fields and step into different roles. The greatest lawyers that I work with are not people who are working 24 hours on law cases. They are much more than that, they have various interests and hobbies, they are wonderful parents, they attend art classes, they sing or play, or write poems, they enjoy life in its various aspects.

A woman should not feel a victim of her choice to work hard. I have never felt like a superhero because I am a hardworking mom, this is at the end of the day a personal choice and should not be interpreted as a personal sacrifice. I’ve made this choice because this way I feel happy and complete and that feeling gives me even more energy to improve on both sides.

But still, in brief – what should the great leader be?

I believe that a true leader should try to the greatest extent to be natural and inspire people not only by saying things but mostly by what he/she does.

In my mind the great leader is responsible for building the right culture, for inspiring people to achieve their best, and for building an environment where people share common values, care for themselves, support each other and most of all love what they do.

Do you think that you are successful?

Success can't really be measured as there are so many aspects to it, but to me, it is not about achieving tremendous outcomes or being incredibly exceptional. It is about whether you feel on the right path and whether you have inspiration in continuing it.

I feel happy and confident taking my little steps because I've proven to myself that hard work pays off and that inspires me. I am surrounded by great people that make my journey easy, mindful, and fun. This is more than enough to feel successful.

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