Our Czech member Ladislav Zvolsky Jr has built an impressive expertise on the often challenging business of construction in his country: if you ever deal with building, you will need him!
In the centre of Prague lives a duet of lawyers – father and son, both named Ladislav Zvolsky, who have been associates for many years. Ladislav Junior tells us 'we work mostly in commercial and corporate law, drafting contracts, litigations, with a lot of foreign clients, and mostly in the field of construction'.
For the Zvolskys, the construction sector in Czech republic has proven to be an interesting area of specialisation. 'There are a lot of disputes', Ladislav Jr says, 'because we have many problems with constructions here. It is very hard to get high quality standards'. Why is it so difficult? 'There are several reasons', he explains, 'first, construction companies are not paid enough, so they have to reduce their costs to survive and this impacts on the quality of their work. Second, people are only learning now that they should demand quality: in Communist times, you were happy if you had anything at all! We are only starting to see people asking for better work”. So there are problems from both sides: people who have poor expectations, and companies who struggle to survive.
According to Ladislav, courts are not always prepared to deal with this.'These are highly technical problems and the judges don't always understand them all. Us lawyers developed a general knowledge about it, so we are able to communicae with experts and understand situations. Judges went from law schools to their offices and rarely step out... They should work in a lawfirm once to see how it works!' he says with a laugh. But he then tempers his statement: 'To be fair, it is not really their fault. The courts are overloaded with cases so even if they wanted to make the effort to learn, they would not be granted the time to do so'.
Last piece of advice from Ladislav: 'whatever you do, trust your common sense. The best way to help your client is to do what you know is right, even when they have the impulse to ask for something you know they cannot get. They will reward you for it in the end.'
