FOCUS | ORGANIZATION | FIRM-WIDE INCREASING-PRODUCTIVITY PROCESSES | LISTENING | COMMUNICATING | BILLING | STAFFING | FEES

Brief Outline of the Firm
Presentation of the Firm

Any law firm should answer a legitimate question:

"What specific value can you bring to our representation?"

Our reply rests on specific attributes that help us provide cost-effective and high-quality services to clients and bring something unique to our representation. We identify and illustrate them here below. In preparing our illustration we have focused on what clients think is important, based on our experience. We hope that the information provided below actually addresses what you care most. If there is any suggestion on any additional topics you want to discuss or any ways in which we can improve our services, please let us know.

FOCUS

We maintain a specific focus on U.S. and Italian international taxation and EU tax law. We advise  U.S. and Italian clients doing business, investing or working outside of Italy and U.S. and foreign clients doing business, investing or working in Italy. and the U.S. We focus on U.S. international tax planning and advice for U.S. and foreign clients. U.S.-Italy cross border taxation is our niche practice. Thanks to our international head office in New York and our constant contacts with the U.S. tax academia and professional community, we have the opportunity to stay at the forefront in the field and can keep our clients current with the latest developments in the area of international taxation and business law. 

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ORGANIZATION

With regional offices in Italy and head office in New York we combine local knowledge with international profile. We can meet with our clients in New York minimizing traveling costs and inconveniences and we work on an extended office-hour basis minimizing time differential problems. We can co-ordinate our work on multi-practice and multi-jurisdiction projects through a network of legal and tax practitioners around the globe and provide client-tailored and sophisticated services through a flexible and cost-effective organization. With our associated professionals we can assist our clients also on the corporate, commercial and other legal aspects of an international transaction.

FIRM-WIDE INCREASING-PRODUCTIVITY PROCESSES

We employ a built-in quality-control system to constantly evaluate and improve our performance and conduct evaluation sessions periodically or after major projects are completed, in order to identify specific areas upon which we can improve our performance. We also use a knowledge-management system that takes advantage of all the intellectual capital developed by the firm and share the benefits of such system with clients.

LISTENING

We believe that a thorough understanding of our client’s business is essential to provide good legal services. The more we know about our client the more valuable we can be to the relationship. This is true in general and especially in the area of international taxation, where the tax ramifications of a transaction are wide and go far beyond the limited scope and contingent time of the deal viewed in isolation, and we must look beyond its short-term effects and understand its wider and longer-term impact on the client’s business. For this purpose, we maintain at our expense a specific knowledge in the client’s industry, make sure that we understand the client’s corporate or business structure and organization and the style of its legal staff, ask questions (not only about the immediate legal issues that bring the client to us, but about the client’s business in general) and listen to the answers. We also make it a point to understand exactly what the client expects from us to avoid over-servicing and more properly address its actual needs.

Like listening, communicating is fundamental to ensure that a relationship is productive. We make ourselves available all the time, we return calls and reply to e-mails promptly and are there when needed. We try to anticipate problems based upon our knowledge of the client and its legal staff, let in-house lawyers know when they should be alert to any particular issue and make communicating with them as painless as possible. We meet with international clients at our head office in New York whenever required on a regular basis without time constraints or additional costs.

BILLING

We make sure we understand clients’ needs in the billing area and our bills deliver the information required in a useful form. We know that corporate clients need budgets, predictability, and prompt rendering of bills. Therefore, we take care that we issue bills that are accurate, on time and based on budgets previously discussed with clients, and we can use task codes, electronic bills and electronic payments to remove any inconvenience and annoyance factor generated by incoherent bills received long after the reserves for matters have been closed.

STAFFING

We take personal responsibility of any client’s matter and handle it individually so that we can provide highly flexible, efficient and client-tailored services. If associated lawyers are brought in on a matter, they meet with clients to make sure a good rapport can be developed. If support lawyers are working on a matter, we make sure they stay through the duration and no replacement is made without discussion and prior approval from the client. In case of replacement, the new support lawyer is properly brought up to date with the matter, at no cost for the client for any learning curve factor or preparatory study of the case.

FEES

We are flexible in our fee arrangements with our clients. Our approach is flexibility and clarity up front. Whether the basis for billing is an hourly fee rate, flat fee, scaled fee or some other method, we agree with clients upon the fee method as well as on costs at the outset of any retention. Certain services like reviewing files, training, secretarial service and preparing budgets and bills are deemed to be included in the normal rate and are never charged separately. We agree on fixed fees for specific projects or flat fees for certain services to make budgeting for our clients easier and to avoid the hassling of monthly billing.