How to Choose a Law Firm in the Czech Republic
When choosing a law firm in the Czech Republic, consider their experience with your type of problem, their communication style, and who will actually handle the case—not just the hourly rate. Before you start working together, verify the lawyer's credentials, references, and liability terms to avoid unqualified providers. In this article, you will learn what to check before the first consultation, what to ask the lawyer, and how to compare offers.
Key takeaways
Specialist or Generalist
For a company, this is the wrong question to ask. A medium-sized manufacturing or trading company doesn't deal with a single legal problem, but dozens of concurrent ones: supplier contracts, complaints, labour law, taxes, occasional disputes, and a transaction once every few years. The real choice is not between a specialist or a generalist, but between one coordinating partner with a team of genuine specialists, or five uncoordinated suppliers.
Fragmented support has a tangible cost: the contract lawyer doesn't know what the financial director has agreed with the tax advisor, and no one sees that the new agreement with the employment agency conflicts with the collective bargaining agreement. Mistakes happen at the interfaces.
A warning sign is not a firm that covers multiple fields, but a single lawyer who claims to handle all fields alone. The lawyers at ARROWS law firm work in a team of more than sixty lawyers, tax advisors, and accountants. The client communicates with a single partner who, depending on the matter, involves a colleague from labour law, tax, or litigation.
How to Recognise a Quality Lawyer
For management, the decisive signs are different than for an individual with a one-off problem.
Demonstrable Experience in a Specific Area
Ask for anonymised examples from your industry: manufacturing, assembly, construction, supply chains, agency employment, claims for defective parts, debt recovery. A firm that handles this agenda will describe the typical course of a case and common client mistakes; a firm that does not will speak generally about quality.
The lawyers at ARROWS law firm provide legal services to large companies. Our portfolio includes more than 150 joint-stock companies and 750 limited liability companies.
Availability of Communication in English
If you have a foreign owner or customer, you need a firm that can prepare contractual documentation and reports for management who do not read Czech. A large proportion of medium-sized manufacturing and assembly companies in the Czech Republic have a German or Austrian owner. We conduct communication with the parent company in English, and thanks to our partners in the ETL Global network in Germany, we can also provide it in German.
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Physical and Time Availability
For a company, availability is a matter of agreed rules. A framework agreement should include a response time for routine queries, a procedure for urgent matters, and the name of a second lawyer to take over the case during the first one's holiday or departure.
The second part of availability is technology. The lawyers at ARROWS law firm work with an internal AI assistant system, Jarvis 2.0, which shortens the initial review of extensive documentation and unifies outputs across teams; the final conclusion is always checked by a lawyer. We describe how the system works and how we protect confidential client data in the article We use AI as a standard. The firm has its own team of developers and four branches in Prague, Hradec Králové, Ostrava, and Olomouc.
Transparent Remuneration and Clear Conditions
A company has three basic models. A flat fee covers an agreed scope of routine agenda for a fixed monthly amount; the contract must state what is included and what is charged separately. An hourly rate with a preliminary estimate is suitable for one-off matters. A budget cap for a case combines both: the firm charges by time but will not exceed the approved amount without your consent.
Along with the offer, also request the reporting method: a monthly work report, an overview of ongoing cases, and a notification when the budget is nearing its cap. If remuneration is not agreed upon, it is governed by the decree on lawyers' fees, the so-called lawyer's tariff; for corporate cooperation, this is a backup rule, not a business model. We discuss how to set up a flat fee in the article on selecting a law firm for flat-fee cooperation.
Emotional Intelligence and the Ability to Listen
In corporate practice, this means listening to the business, not just the legal question. A quality lawyer will ask what you want to achieve commercially, what the cash flow and operational impacts are, and how much risk you are willing to take. Only then will they propose a solution. Management does not need ten pages of cautious reservations, but a recommendation and its justification.
Initial Consultation
For a company, the first meeting is a mutual audit: you are vetting the firm, and the firm needs to understand your business.
What to Prepare
The group structure and ownership relations, an overview of ongoing disputes and significant contracts, information about previous legal support, and an estimate of the annual volume of work. A list of the three things that cost you the most time or money in the last year will also help. At ARROWS law firm, however, thanks to our own systems, we can retrieve your group's structure in advance and more easily understand your needs.
Questions You Should Ask
Who will be our main contact and who will be their substitute?
How long does it take for the firm to become familiar with our contracts, business terms, and personnel practices?
What is the response time for a routine query and what is the procedure for urgent matters?
What does the monthly report look like and how will we know when we are approaching the budget?
Do you work for any of our competitors, suppliers, or customers?
What is your insurance limit and how does it cover the value of our typical contracts?
How to Know It's Not the Right Fit
The offer is based on an hourly rate without an estimate of the scope and without reporting rules.
The firm cannot say who will handle the case and who will take over in case of an absence.
When asked about conflicts of interest, they respond generally instead of performing a specific check.
They promise a specific outcome for a dispute or transaction, which cannot be guaranteed in law.
At the first meeting, the lawyers at ARROWS law firm will openly tell you if they make sense for your agenda. If not, we will recommend a different course of action.
Foreign Elements
Corporate work has a cross-border element more often than it seems: a supply contract under German law, a claim against a Polish customer, employees posted to Slovakia, or intra-group agreements with a parent company.
ARROWS law firm is part of the international ETL Global network and coordinates legal, tax, and accounting services in more than 70 countries; our strongest cooperation is in Germany, Poland, Spain, France, Hungary, and Slovakia. For international projects, we can prepare a cost estimate and terms of cooperation for up to 20 jurisdictions within 48 hours. You communicate with one partner at ARROWS, while we handle the coordination of foreign colleagues.
Firm Size and Selection of Specialists
Size matters where you need the capacity for a transaction or a large dispute and expertise that one person cannot have. A large international firm has the capacity, but often also conflicts of interest and a price that is not worthwhile for the routine agenda of a medium-sized company. A sole practitioner is cheaper but is a single point of failure.
The decision also includes whether to have your own in-house lawyer and how to divide the work between them and an external firm; we address this in the article on in-house lawyers and outsourcing legal services. ARROWS law firm is large enough for complex transactions and disputes and independent enough to act quickly and without unnecessary conflicts of interest.
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Insurance and Professional Liability
A lawyer is liable to the client for any damage caused in connection with the practice of law; in the case of a law firm, the firm is liable to the client. The law therefore imposes compulsory insurance and, for a limited liability law firm, sets a minimum indemnity limit of CZK 50 million for each partner. For sole practitioners, the minimum is determined by the Bar Association's professional regulations.
The statutory minimum is just a lower limit. For a CFO, the firm's insurance is a risk transfer tool: if the lawyer makes a mistake, the insurance company pays the damages, but only up to the agreed limit. Therefore, compare the limit with the value of your typical contracts and disputes, not with the price of legal services.
ARROWS law firm is insured for professional liability with a limit of CZK 350,000,000, which is seven times the statutory minimum for a law firm. The limit also covers transactions and disputes in the hundreds of millions of crowns. We provide proof of insurance upon request, and the framework agreement can include a commitment not to reduce the limit during our cooperation.
How to Navigate Legal Services
Legal Advice vs. Representation
Corporate work is divided into ongoing advice (contracts, queries from operations and HR), representation before courts and administrative bodies, and projects with their own budget, typically transactions or group restructurings. Each part has a different suitable remuneration model: a flat fee for ongoing work, a budget for a dispute, a fixed price for a project.
Document Preparation
The biggest saving in corporate legal work is standardisation. A firm that prepares template documentation for you (terms and conditions, framework purchase agreements, supplier contracts, employment contracts, internal policies) and keeps it up-to-date reduces the number of matters that need to be handled individually. After a change in the law, the firm should propose amendments, not you asking the question.
Defence and Disputes
For companies, disputes most often involve supply contracts, debt recovery, claims, and labour law disputes. A quality firm will provide you with an estimate of the costs, the probability of success, and the length of the proceedings before initiating a dispute, and compare them with the value of the claim.
How to Avoid Conflicts of Interest
A lawyer must refuse to provide legal services if they have already provided services in the same or a related matter to someone with conflicting interests, or if information about another client could give your opponent an unfair advantage.
In a corporate environment, conflicts of interest are hidden in groups and supply relationships: the firm works for your parent and subsidiary company, for you and your main supplier, or for two competitors in the same market. Before taking on any new case, the firm conducts a conflict check, which is why it asks you for the names of opposing parties and companies in your group.
Risks in Selecting a Law Firm
The following table summarises the risks of a poor choice and how a professional firm prevents them:
Possible Problems | How ARROWS Helps (consultation@arws.cz) |
|---|---|
Fragmented legal support: Five suppliers passing information through you, and errors at their interfaces. | One coordinating partner: We handle law, tax, and accounting from a single point with more than 60 experts. |
Insufficient insurance: The firm's limit does not cover the value of your transaction or dispute. | Limit of CZK 350,000,000: Our professional liability insurance also covers transactions worth hundreds of millions of crowns. |
Unclear pricing: An hourly rate without a scope estimate, surprises on the invoice, no overview of budget usage. | Agreed model and reporting: A flat fee, cap, or budget per case, with monthly reports and alerts before reaching the limit. |
Dependence on a single lawyer: Unavailability, missed deadlines, loss of company knowledge when the lawyer leaves. | Substitutability and technology: A pair of lawyers per client, shared documentation, and an internal AI system that maintains continuity of outputs. |
How to Verify a Lawyer's References and Experience
Rankings and Awards
A place in rankings like Law Firm of the Year, Chambers and Partners, or The Legal 500 is a sign of quality, but its absence does not mean the opposite. Since 2016, ARROWS law firm has been regularly awarded in the Law Firm of the Year competition and listed in The Legal 500 ranking.
Personal References and Reviews
The best reference for a company is another company from a similar industry and of a similar size. We publish references from our clients, including manufacturing and technology companies as well as banks, on our website with the names of the people who provided them.
References on Request
If you are selecting a firm through a tender process, give all bidders the same assignment: a description of the work, an estimate of the volume, the required remuneration model, and reporting requirements. It is legitimate to ask for anonymised examples of similar cases and for a contact at a current client.
Special Situations and Urgent Needs
In a company, three types of situations cannot wait: procedural deadlines (a preliminary injunction from a competitor), interventions by authorities (an inspection by the labour inspectorate, police at the company), and operational crises (insolvency of a key customer, a cyber-attack). When selecting a firm, ask what procedure they have for these situations and who you can call outside of business hours.
ARROWS law firm has an agreed procedure for urgent matters with a designated contact for clients on a flat-fee basis. Express work outside of business hours may be charged at a higher rate; this should also be specified in the contract in advance.
Conclusion
For a company, choosing a law firm is a decision about a supplier for several years. The deciding factors are experience with your type of work, the ability to coordinate law, tax, and accounting from a single place, agreed rules of cooperation, and insurance corresponding to the value of your contracts and disputes.
The lawyers at ARROWS law firm work in a team of more than sixty lawyers, tax advisors, and accountants, are insured for CZK 350,000,000, coordinate foreign matters through the ETL Global network, and use their own AI tools under the supervision of a lawyer. If you are selecting a new legal partner, we will prepare an offer for you according to your specifications.