Piotr Kochański’s business advisory vision
Kochański & Partners is a coherent, consistently and effectively built advisory business concept of Piotr Kochański – a lawyer, entrepreneur and manager, keeping a close eye on trends and having been fiercely promoting legal talents for nearly 37 years, since he started to gain experience in building law firms.
For almost a decade, in the 1990s, Piotr worked with top US law firms as Partner from Poland, where the systemic changes and economic experiments on an international scale were taking place. US law firms were then involved in attracting their increasingly global clients to this economic boom in Central and Eastern Europe. Piotr participated in this expansion by learning and gaining experience. He was meeting with change leaders, establishing relationships and learning lessons. All this contributed to developing his unique know-how. Being well versed in American law firms’ business models, he is able to continuously improve his best practices and business processes.
His “Technology Transfer, Model from West to East” course, which he prepared as Visiting Scholar at the invitation of the Faculty of Law at George Washington University when he lived in Washington D.C. in 1993-1996 and worked with Hogan & Hartson, was completed by 22 students. Their papers summarising their joint analyses provide material evidence of how dynamically the vision and understanding of an increasingly multicultural world was then changing.
Building a new quality in the Polish legal market
Piotr returned with a head full of concrete plans to build a new quality in the Polish legal market. An ambitious, modern advisory firm, with legal advice as the core of its services from which new fields and specialisations grow, to which the firm adapts and which it develops.
He has created a firm based on values that are close to his heart – the knowledge sharing culture, the need for personal development, drawing on diverse skillsets and backgrounds, working in partnership, building and benefiting from synergy effects.
Having always been fascinated by digitisation and information technology galloping in the 21st century, Piotr planned, designed, invested and tested how to use these experiences and knowledge to create and apply cutting-edge technologies that he believed would help manage the business. He therefore designed and, whilst continually investing, developed the IT solutions that now form the core of the comprehensive Kochański & Partners management system.
Piotr has always strived to attract and promote the best specialists on the market, to ensure their continuous development, to entrust them with increasingly ambitious and demanding projects and to inspire them to become true leaders.
The Advisory Firm based on partnership, growth and cooperation
Piotr’s guiding vision has always been the idea of sharing responsibilities and competences within the “turquoise organization” business model, based on partnership, trust, responsibility and cooperation, resulting from a constantly raised business and individual awareness of shared needs, costs and mutual interests.
Following this vision, experienced, aware of their skills and cognitive abilities, loyal, possibly best-prepared personnel able to work independently with usually high-profile clients in special knowledge- and skill-intensive areas of consultancy practice and in selected sectors of the economy, united in their own corporate structure fairly sharing revenues and profits, can create unique added value.
“In a nutshell. In a turquoise enterprise functioning based on the detailed procedures applied, which have been developed over the years, as a consequence of the carefully analysed processes and the individual and group awareness of the people involved, as well as the precisely described, specific but voluntarily accepted responsibilities, the system works like a dynamic, well-oiled and controlled machine that only goes forward. Such an enterprise does not waste time going astray just like those firms using old patterns and traditional systems of subordination, i.e. simply systems of domination by institutions or individuals” – explains Piotr Kochański.
A natural consequence of building such an organisation was the decision to promote 13 new equity partners in Kochański & Partners on 7 September.
13 New Equity Partners for new challenging times
Most of them are leaders, legal professionals heading major sectorial and legal practices.
- Paweł Cholewiński, Partner, Head of Transactional Practices Group / Real Estate, M&A
- Agata Dziwisz-Moshe, Partner, Head of Tax Practice
- Anna Gwiazda, Partner, Head of Labour Law Practice
- Jacek Kozikowski, Partner, Head of Infrastructure and Asian Desk
- Michał König, Partner, Head of Commercial Arbitration
- Pawel Mardas, Partner, M&A
- Mateusz Ostrowski, Partner, Civil Litigation
- Andrzej Pałys, Partner, Financial Institutions Commercial Disputes
- Aleksandra Ryżkowska, Partner, Head of International Practice Development, Head of Chinese Desk
- Wojciech Wrochna, Partner, Head of Energy, Natural Resources & Chemicals.
Other New Partners do not have a legal background, but their skills, knowledge and experience are crucial in day-to-day law firm management.
“This group is the backbone of the Kochański & Partners team – they know the firm inside out, understand its processes and needs, and enable it to operate seamlessly, sustainably and profitably.
Such an expansion of the Kochański & Partners Firm enables sustainable, profitable, constantly evolving and well-managed cooperation between our lawyers and expert consultants working in multidisciplinary teams.
Monika Wojciechowska, our Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Michał Walczak, Chief Technology Officer, and Bartosz Pawłowski, Business Strategy & Development Director, are Partners involved in day-to-day management. They oversee and control finance, our Firm’s practices and their business strategies development, information technology, internal and external communications and other areas.
At Kochański & Partners, we believe that this unprecedented, significant expansion will result in a thorough improvement of the Firm’s functioning, organisation and capabilities in a short period of time, significantly raising its competitive edge in the Polish and CEE markets” – emphasises Piotr Kochański.
Strategy for today, philosophy for tomorrow
Today Kochański & Partners is one of the largest Polish law firms successfully competing with the best international law and advisory firms. We are recognised as a leader in numerous areas of law.
One of the pillars of our competitive edge is the use of modern technology in law firm management.
From the very beginning, Piotr has focused on building the best, mostly in-house IT solutions. And it is precisely such an in-house, state-of-the-art ERP platform that is the foundation of the system on which Kochański & Partners is built.
Technology leader and creator of modern solutions for business
The platform authored by Piotr Kochański has been developed over the last 10 years. The most highly qualified Polish programmers were involved in the development process, with a number of Kochański & Partners employees having also contributed to its final shape.
Currently, Monika Wojciechowska, alongside Piotr Kochański, is the Project Manager and co-architect of the IRAAPORT platform – a modern Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system for planning and managing K&P resources.
IRAAPORT is an innovative, multi-module platform integrating all business processes at every level of the organisation.
It enables secure and fast access to information on ongoing projects, analysis of their status, costs and profitability, whilst allowing automated, login- and password-secured communication with clients, their electronic billing and online consultation with lawyers from all devices and from anywhere in the world. Among other modules the system also consists of an advanced, modern CRM system and a digital workflow management tool. And much, much more.
“We are ready to leap into legal e-commerce. Not just as a law firm using technology, but as an ambitious advisory firm, a developer of modern and comprehensive solutions for business, and as a true innovation creator” – concludes Piotr Kochański.
