Adhering to Core Entrepreneurial Principles
Dean’s professional career has been deeply influenced by his own commitment to entrepreneurship and free enterprise.
Dean closely identifies with the entrepreneurial mindset and subscribes to the core principles that shape this mindset: creativity, independence, willpower and risk tolerance. Dean constantly bears these core principles in mind when counseling his commercial clients.
Maintaining a Unique Business Law Practice
Dean co-founded his own law practice right out of law school- an unconventional career path for law graduates. For over 30 years, his firm has developed a renowned ability to react with agility to solve complex problems and to move confidently to pro-actively curb client risks. Going beyond the norm, Dean has repeatedly addressed and fulfilled the demand for swift and effective responses in what are known in the profession as “hard cases”.
Dean has developed a customized service- a new paradigm for business law- that is specifically designed to handle hard cases. Dean concentrates on strategic assessment at the macro level instead of technical analysis at the micro level. He steps back from the legal intricacies and adopts a holistic approach- one that synthesizes underlying technical expertise; grasps hold of a client’s ultimate business objectives; and ultimately forges a blueprint for achieving these objectives.
As part of this process, Dean invests substantial, up front time to exhaustively debrief his client and gain a deeper insight into his client’s overall operations.
The intensity of Dean’s service often cultivates the formation of a long-term client relationship- one that goes beyond the conclusion of the original assignment. Dean generally comes away from the initial matter with a broad-based understanding of his client’s business. This puts the client in the position of being able to efficiently draw upon Dean’s assistance on matters of a more routine nature that may arise in the future.
Dean’s customized service often demands a departure from standard operating procedure and a willingness to take a professional or financial risk. In such circumstances, Dean relies on his professional independence.
Delivering Customized Service to the Global Business Community
Dean’s practice is not only rooted in his dedication to entrepreneurship; it is inspired by the entrepreneurial spirit of those who he has been fortunate to represent. Over his 32 year professional career, Dean has acquired a wealth of experience advising a wide range of business leaders and commercial enterprises in the global marketplace.
Dean has had the privilege of giving personal counsel to highly successful entrepreneurs in many parts of the world-often on mission critical matters. Dean has been grateful for the opportunity to be of service to such extraordinarily talented individuals. His active participation in this form of assignment has given him extensive exposure to complex commercial matters from the top down- from the executive level, where the plan is designed, to the operational level where the plan in put into effect.
This is not to say that Dean’s practice is confined to the representation of accomplished entrepreneurs or multi-nationals enterprises. To the contrary, Dean regularly acts on behalf of start-up operations and commercial enterprises engaged in the small to mid market sectors. Dean’s customized service is particularly valuable to this kind of enterprise since it typically lacks in-house counsel. In this scenario, Dean functions like an outside general counsel that guides the enterprise through the process of clarifying its fundamental objectives, prioritizing these objectives and mapping out the best way to reach these objectives.
Defending Commercial Interests under State Pressure in the Developing Markets
Dean’s belief in free enterprise, and his work on behalf of international business, has often thrust him into the position of defending entrepreneurs, commercial enterprises and industries against state interference. Dean has been compelled to confront all forms of government interference in many regions of the world- from one extreme to the other. He has faced down over-regulation, illegal regulation, unjust treatment and outright theft of commercial interests at the hands of the state.
Dean’s work on cases of unjust treatment and outright theft invariably arise in developing nations where corruption is rampant and rule of law is virtually non-existent. When Dean takes on an assignment of this nature, he does not rely exclusively on conventional legal advocacy as it is practiced in the developed nations. This approach is never sufficient to serve the client’s best interests. This is attributable to the fact that the client’s so-called “legal problem” is rarely just that. It is fundamentally “political” as opposed to “legal”- a situation in which political elites manipulate the local legal system as a pretext for abusing the fundamental rights of commercial enterprises, entrepreneurs and executives.
Under these circumstances, Dean typically works out a multi-faceted “legal/political” solution to the “legal/political” problem. He engages in “political advocacy” in conjunction with traditional legal advocacy at the local and international level.
Dean’s political advocacy entails an outreach to any in country constituency, third party state, NGO or other strategic ally possessing the capacity to influence the conduct of the local state authorities for the client’s benefit. At the same time, Dean presses the client’s case in the local and international media- the ultimate “court of public opinion”. Although the local media is rarely free from state intermeddling, any form of in country coverage that shows defiance against the state misconduct has the potential to erode the confidence of the responsible authorities.
Dean’s legal advocacy encompasses in country opposition to the arbitrary misconduct despite the fact that the local “legal process” amounts to a sham- a legal cover for state illegality. Although resistance of this nature does not change the predetermined outcome of the legal process, it exposes flagrant due process violations. This serves to delegitimize the attack against the client in the eyes of objective observers.
Legal advocacy may also be pursued outside the country- before any international tribunal or national court where the rule of law governs. The objective here is to engage any independent adjudicative body that will give the client a fair hearing.
When advancing his case in a court of law or the court of public opinion, Dean goes well beyond the strict legal arguments. He does his best to strip away the legal pretense and uncover the underlying political realities- the implicit political opportunities, motives and consequences that lied behind the “legal case”. Dean often draws on expert evidence to demonstrate that the predicament encountered by the client has been directly or indirectly caused by larger, systemic problems in the developing country.