Spring conference 2023 in Lugano

Thanks to SwissLegal Indemini Partner SA, the 13th and most recent member of our group, SwissLegal is also represented in the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland since 2022 and thus becomes the first network of law firms to be present in all four language regions of Switzerland. It was therefore with great pleasure that we held this year's spring meeting under the sign of this expansion by being welcomed in the office of our Ticino colleagues.

We hereby take the opportunity to thank Clarissa Indemini and her team for their hospitality and for their active support in co-organizing this great event in Lugano!

After the joint start at Via G.B. Pioda 8 in Lugano, the program continued at the Hotel Villa Sassa (Lugano), where the main conference began and the guests were first briefed on the Group's business performance as well as on completed and future projects and on general group business information. Following this, the technical part started in the form of workshops that were designed to foster the active exchange of experience between the professionals as well as between the individual locations. This time, the break-out sessions were dedicated to the following topics: "Shareholders' agreements" (Daniela von Flüeh, Dr. Nicolas Rouiller); "Successful negotiations" (Martin Frey); "Enforcement of foreign judgments in Switzerland" (Alban Matthey, Philip Jackson) and "IT solutions & legal tech at SL" (Manuel C. Frick). Many thanks to the aforementioned colleagues for the impeccable preparation and conduct of their workshops as well as for the subsequent concise summary of the respective outputs in the plenary session. As usual, the technical part was rounded off with a joint dinner that also offered the opportunity to further deepen certain workshop topics or simply to network in a convivial setting.

This time it was special that the conference was scheduled for two days, i.e. in addition to the inter-office technical exchange on the following day, an optional program was offered, which was dedicated to the goal of introducing the region to the guests and to combine this with physical activity. It included a short hike along the Olive Trail from Castagnola to Gandria on Saturday 13th May 2023, where delicious Ticino specialties awaited the participants for refreshment (at the Ristorante Antico). After that, some participants returned to Lugano by boat, while a dozen set off for the Smugglers' Museum on the opposite side of the lake, where they were already awaited by a member of the Customs (ex. Border Guard) and introduced to the history of the border control at Gandria. The officer proudly pointed out relics worth seeing (e.g. a battery-powered smuggler's boat as well as a smuggler's submarine with pedal drive), which could be seized in earlier decades and stand as examples of how imaginatively smugglers used the sea and land routes between Switzerland and Italy to illegally import and export goods from the 1940s on.

Despite the cloudy start to the conference weekend, the sun showed its best side towards the end of the excursion and offered the guests a spectacular panorama on the boat, before the landing in Lugano also marked the end of an eventful program in Lugano. We will keep it in best memory and are already looking forward to another edition in this fantastic area !

« Ci vediamo  ! »