TRINITI law firm welcomes the new year with changes. There are changes in the management structure of the company and an independent member of the board is introduced. Partner Vilija Viešūnaitė is taking over the helm of the law firm in Lithuania, whereas Agnė Varnelienė and Agnė Ustinovičienė, two professionals having grown up in this team, become partners.
From now on, the board of TRINITI will be comprised of partners Vilija Viešūnaitė, Linas Sabaliauskas and Aurelija Rutkauskaitė, and an independent member of the board who will be chosen from experienced business management professionals. The former board of the law firm of five partners is to be replaced by the aforementioned board of four. Aiming to change the customary practice of board formation in Lithuanian law firms, TRINITI becomes the first law firm in Lithuania to modernize its business management according to the Western practice of law firms, by invoking external expertise to assist in management.
“With the growth of our law firm and the increasing number of partners, taking increasingly complex business development decisions efficiently is becoming a challenge. Therefore, we are changing the management structure by decreasing the number of partners in the board and introducing an experienced independent business strategist into the decision-making process. I am delighted that our culture is open to solutions that ensure progress, making us the first law firm in Lithuania to have an experienced management professional as an independent board member. This is a new practice for our international law firm, so we hope to implement this new corporate governance model in Latvia and Estonia in the near future,” said Vilija Viešūnaitė, who replaced Linas Sabaliauskas in a position of the managing partner at the start of this year. She had been sharing the responsibilities of the managing partner with Linas Sabaliauskas starting from the year 2018, so this was a planned switch.
Vilija Viešūnaitė is one of the co-founders of TRINITI, who has worked in the law firm as a partner, regional head of the Intellectual Property Law Practice Group and Head of the Dispute Resolution Practice Group in Lithuania. Vilija Viešūnaitė is a recognized expert in the fields of intellectual property and media, dispute resolution, with over 20 years of professional experience. She is also a Lithuanian and European patent attorney, a member of the Copyright Committee of the European Communities Trademark Association (ECTA), president of the Institute of Lithuanian Patent Attorneys and an arbitrator at the Vilnius Court of Commercial Arbitration.
Linas Sabaliauskas had been managing the TRINITI office in Lithuania since the incorporation of the law firm in the Baltic States in 2011. During this period, the law firm grew to encompass 26 team members, including 22 lawyers, and the number of partners in Lithuania more than doubled. The individual efficiency of team members was also increased considerably: by the end of 2019, it has increased by a factor of two compared to the second year of operation. In seven years when Mr. Sabaliauskas was in charge, the client's average income basket more than doubled, and the number of clients who entrust their questions to two or three offices of TRINITI Baltic was three times higher compared to the same period at the end of the year. During this period, the law firm's clients included the names that are known the world over, such as Audi, FIFA, DB Engineering & Consulting, Crocs, as well as Lithuanian start-ups Deeper, Millo, Oxipit and others. About 80 percent of clients of TRINITI are foreign-owned companies.
“Defining clear-cut rules of internal processes, team motivation strategy, and creating a solid foundation for employee career planning, at the very start of the activities of the law office, allowed
us to aim for maximum efficiency in all fields of activity throughout this entire period. Therefore, I am very pleased that today I am passing the helm of a really strong law firm, which, having just modernized its management, is ready for another leap with new energy,” Linas Sabaliauskas said.
“I am delighted with this team's confidence as truly exciting and challenging time lies ahead. We have big plans: we will continue to grow our team and add more competencies. And it will be much easier to do that physically due to the fact that we are moving to a new, more spacious office on Vilniaus Street, as soon as this February,” Vilija Viešūnaitė hinted about the nearest plans of the law firm. Development plans also concern the growth of the firm's partner team.
From this year on, TRINITI office in Lithuania will have 7 partners. Attorneys-at-law Agnė Varnelienė and Agnė Ustinovičienė joined the firm at the beginning of the year. They both have 13 years of professional experience. Agnė Varnelienė has extensive experience in the fields of energy, commercial and corporate law and litigation. Meanwhile, Agnė Ustinovičienė has expertise and experience in the fields of tax, agricultural, bankruptcy and restructuring law and dispute resolution.
“I think we are at an excellent starting point to achieve future plans. Our law firm has been really successful in recent years. With the recruitment of new professionals and without any change in their number, the firm managed to achieve a 17 percent increase in turnover,” Vilija Viešūnaitė said.
The most significant projects of TRINITI law firm in 2019 were: the deal of acquisition of Danpower Baltic, obtaining of electronic money and payment institution license for a Lithuanian start-up company TransferGo operating on the international market, a legal case won for Louis Vuitton regarding legal liability of natural persons for the importation of counterfeit goods. The law firm has managed to assist dozens of companies to adapt to changes in the new General Data Protection Regulation (BDAR).
Last year, the clients of the law firm in Lithuania were a French renewable energy group Idex, a German concern Volkswagen and Droplet Genomics, the largest start-up of Lithuanian biochemical scientists, providing its services to universities such as Harvard, Oxford University, and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory.
For more information:
Aurelija Artemiuk, Marketing and Communication Project Manager
+370 68799070, aurelija.artemiuk@triniti.lt
www.triniti.lt