Placement in Istanbul

The 2012 Jorge Mañá Award went to Faruk Drovs, young lawyer at RBS RöverBrönnerSusat, WLN Berlin. Here is his report:

Thanks to the 2012 WLN Jorge Mañá Award I had the great opportunity to work with AKT Law Office (hereinafter “AKT”) in Istanbul for three weeks in May 2012.

I dealt mostly with cases in the fields of corporate and shipping law, which are also the core expertise of AKT. But also other subjects of law, such as inheritance law with international regards, were of importance. I worked with almost everyone in the team and cannot tell you how friendly and good-humored it was.

Looking back, the period I spent in Istanbul seems to me rather like two months than three weeks, since I had so many glimpses into the various areas of AKT’s work.

On my second working day, AKT and the Marshall Islands (which are represented in Turkey by AKT) hosted a reception for their clients and partners at an impressive location with a wonderful view towards the Bosporus. I was surprised how many important representatives of the international shipping sector were in place. So I found myself in the unusual but entirely comfortable situation of belonging to the hosts, welcoming and talking to many different guests but being absolutely new to the team of AKT as well as in Istanbul and with shipping law. It was a wonderful evening and led quickly to a “we-feeling”, as the Germans call it (a sense of belonging together).

The whole team with about 10 lawyers and a few staff members were integrating me from the first day in a very gentle and welcoming manner. Even if I had not spoken a single word of Turkish I could have talked to the whole crew in English, because their language proficiency is that strong. And as I learned this was really essential for their work with clients.

An example of the practice of AKT which demanded a good knowledge of the English language was an interesting arbitration matter. My lawyer colleague Mrs. Kadriye Yürük worked on this case and I was supporting her. We were dealing with charterers, demurrage, “safe harbor” and other terms and issues of shipping law which were totally new for me. It was really great fun to talk with Kadriye and the client about how to counter the arguments of the opponents, sitting in the client’s office and drinking cay (black tea), lots of cay…

I also had the chance to be involved in various transactions at the notary’s office, the land registry office, the shipping authority and at the (world’s second largest!) court building.

For me it was great to have at least the impression of being a tiny bit useful as a lawyer in a country, where my father originally comes from but where I had lived for only a few years. But first and foremost it was amazing to work together with the AKT-team.

I want to thank the whole team of AKT Law for the great time and working experience. And again I want to thank the WLN-members for giving me this opportunity.”

Faruk Drovs, Rechtsanwalt, RBS RoeverBroennerSusat Rechtsanwälte, f.drovs@rbs-partner.de