Lawyers Cooperation News

LC Board Member Massimo Caiazza, Caiazza and Partners, has been named Lawyer of the Month in the Swedish Bar Association magazine Advokaten. 

Massimo is an Italian avvocato working in Milan and a Swedish advokat. He was the first person to be admitted as a member of the Swedish Bar Association without Swedish citizenship. This month's edition of Advokaten celebrates his achievements as one of the founding members of the International Section of the Swedish Bar Association.

You can find the magazine article here (page 49). Below is a copy of the article translated in English.

Congratulations once more, Massimo.

The Lawyer of the Month

How is it that you are both Italian and Swedish born?

I met my future wife Susanne in Udine in 1980 when I was 19 and she was 18. We were AFS students, she was in Italy on a scholarship to an art college and I had returned to Udine after a year in the USA. At that time I didn't speak a word of Swedish and had not been to Sweden either. We have now been together for 44 years and Sweden has become an important part of my life.

When I was a trainee at the Carler law firm in Stockholm in 1986 as a newly qualified Italian lawyer, I commuted from Eskilstuna and spent four hours a day on the train. Then I decided to use the time and started reading legal books in Swedish. That's how I got my education in Swedish law. The lawyer Barbara Segesvary was my mentor and I learnt the profession from her. Before that, I was a trainee in Udine with one of the few female lawyers in Italy in the 1980s, so I can say that my professional background comes from women.

Susanne and I got married in Eskilstuna in 1988, and since then we have been living in Milan, where I opened my law firm and passed the Italian bar exam. I continued to have daily contacts with Swedish clients and colleagues. When Sweden joined the EU in 1995, I was the first foreign lawyer to apply to become a Swedish lawyer. It took a year for the Swedish Bar Association to respond, they came back with a demand for three knowledge tests on Swedish law that I did at Stockholm University. After a further aptitude test, I was admitted in 1996 as the first member of the Swedish Bar Association without Swedish citizenship, with the full title of Advokat. I continued my practice in Milan.

How do Swedish and Italian legal cultures differ?

There are differences in the interpretation and application of laws: consistent and predictable for Swedish lawyers, while Italian lawyers are more used to a flexible interpretation of rules depending on the specific case. This may lead to different expectations on how a legal situation should be handled. I must add that legal certainty in Italy does not have the same priority as in Sweden, and this is reflected in millions of ongoing civil cases, over 30,000 decisions per year from the Italian Supreme Court and over 240,000 Italian lawyers. However, there are not only disadvantages to such a situation: access to justice is very easy in Italy, an army of lawyers maintains the rule of law in society, and many laws that do not come on time are created by judgements driven by lawyers.

You were one of the founders of the International Section of the Swedish Bar Association. What does the section mean for those working outside Sweden?

Swedish companies and institutions should know that there are almost 100 Swedish lawyers working outside Sweden in many different countries. It should be natural for them to look for us in the first instance when they have a case abroad. I am amazed that new clients, after more than 30 years, are still surprised to discover that there is a Swedish lawyer in Italy with a foreign surname who ... also speaks Swedish.

It is important and safe to hire a Swedish lawyer who is bound by Swedish ethical rules even when doing business abroad. We are a unique network that ensures knowledge, quality and correct working methods in accordance with Swedish standards, and let me say that no one other than a Swedish lawyer operating in another country has as good knowledge of both systems.