My father is an economist (with a minor in law) and an association managing director \u2013 now retired.<\/p>\n
And for many years, he was firmly convinced that his association didn’t need a lawyer (but rather classic economists, both male and female).<\/p>\n
This is remarkable, considering that over the course of his professional life, my father successfully founded and managed a total of four associations and one GmbH, and contributed to the founding and operation of numerous other organizations. He employed staff, concluded contracts, rented business premises, applied for and was responsible for funding projects, collaborated with companies, ministries, and other organizations, and made decisions every day that could have legal implications in one way or another.<\/p>\n
But a lawyer?<\/p>\n
He didn’t need one. He didn’t want one. <\/p>\n
Or so he thought.<\/p>\n
Then I came along.<\/p>\n
Admittedly, he didn’t change his mind entirely voluntarily.<\/strong><\/p>\n When I started at the State Association of Baden-W\u00fcrttemberg Industry \u2013 today’s Unternehmer Baden-W\u00fcrttemberg \u2013 I was the only female lawyer among nearly ten colleagues.<\/p>\n My father was also my boss.<\/p>\n That alone would probably provide enough material for an article of its own.<\/p>\n However, a fairly clear rule applied to our collaboration from the outset: In the office, he was my boss, and I was one of his employees. Our family relationship played no role there.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, one thing changed quite quickly.<\/p>\n Whenever a legal question arose somewhere in the association, it landed on my desk.<\/p>\n Initially occasionally.<\/p>\n Then more frequently.<\/p>\n And eventually, it became a matter of course.<\/p>\n And suddenly, law was everywhere.<\/strong><\/p>\n There were contracts that needed to be reviewed or drafted.<\/p>\n Labor law questions.<\/p>\n Tenancy law.<\/p>\n Data protection.<\/p>\n Funding conditions.<\/p>\n International projects.<\/p>\n Corporate and association law topics.<\/p>\n And finally, even the merger of two associations.<\/p>\n The interesting thing was: None of these topics announced themselves beforehand with the words: “Attention, here comes a legal issue now.”<\/p>\n It often began with a harmless question.<\/p>\n Or a decision that had to be made.<\/p>\n Or an idea where someone eventually asked: Can we actually do it this way?<\/p>\n And precisely at this point, the supposedly superfluous female lawyer suddenly became a very practical resource. Because what he truly didn’t need was someone who, with every idea, first explained why it couldn’t work (legally).<\/p>\n He also didn’t need pages-long expert opinions about problems he didn’t even have yet.<\/p>\n And certainly not someone who reflexively hit the brakes on every business decision.<\/p>\n What he needed \u2013 and what probably every company needs \u2013 was someone who understood what he wanted to achieve<\/strong>, recognized the legal risks, and then helped find a viable path.<\/p>\n Perhaps his initial skepticism towards lawyers was less about whether he needed legal expertise, and more about what we both understood by legal advice.<\/p>\n “That’s not possible” is, after all, not advice.<\/strong><\/p>\n I have carried this thought from our collaboration with me to this day.<\/p>\n Of course, there are situations where the legal answer simply must be “No.”<\/p>\n But very often, the actual work is not yet finished.<\/p>\n Then the next question is:<\/p>\n How can it be done instead?<\/strong><\/p>\n Can a contract be structured differently? Choose a different setup? Limit a risk? Distribute responsibilities differently? Change a process? Or achieve the business goal in another legally sound way?<\/p>\n That’s precisely where legal advice becomes interesting for me.<\/p>\n Not as an obstacle, but as part of the solution.<\/p>\n And then things became international.<\/strong><\/p>\n International projects quickly became part of my work, initially primarily thanks to my extensive language skills \u2013 including in Mexico, the Danube region, and Ghana.<\/p>\n At that point, it was no longer sufficient to think exclusively in legal categories.<\/p>\n Suddenly, companies, associations, ministries, funding bodies, and project partners from different countries sat at one table. Different legal systems met different working methods, interests, and cultures.<\/p>\n It didn’t help much to only know what was written in a law.<\/p>\n One had to understand how the parties involved functioned, what goal they pursued, and how to turn very different prerequisites into a common project.<\/p>\n Perhaps that’s precisely where what I now call integral corporate consulting<\/strong> began.<\/p>\n So, did my father finally admit he was wrong?<\/strong><\/p>\n Well.<\/p>\n Anyone who knows fathers knows that one shouldn’t set expectations too high for such moments.<\/p>\n But I was able to advise him and my colleagues on legal matters for many years. Later, I moved to the Forum Luft- und Raumfahrt Baden-W\u00fcrttemberg e.V., which he also led until the board retired him two years ago and appointed me as managing director. And the question of whether an association even needs legal expertise eventually ceased to be asked.<\/p>\n I’ll just take that as an “admission of guilt.”<\/p>\n And what did I learn from that?<\/strong><\/p>\n Perhaps above all this:<\/p>\n Good legal advice is recognized when the person who has to make a decision can make a better decision after the advice than before.<\/p>\n My father was an economist.<\/p>\n I am a female lawyer.<\/p>\n He wanted to know how we could solve a problem.<\/p>\n I wanted to know how we could solve it in a legally sound way.<\/p>\n And eventually, we realized:<\/em><\/p>\n One works astonishingly well with the other.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My father is an economist (with a minor in law) and an association managing director \u2013 now retired. And for many years, he was firmly convinced that his association didn’t need a lawyer (but rather classic economists, both male and female). This is remarkable, considering that over the course of his professional life, my father […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized-en-us"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/constanzewolf.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/constanzewolf.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/constanzewolf.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/constanzewolf.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/constanzewolf.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=902"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/constanzewolf.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/constanzewolf.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/constanzewolf.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/constanzewolf.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n
\nPerhaps my father was a little bit right after all.<\/strong><\/p>\n