New Clients and New Projects. Causa Finita reveals its plan of operations for 2018

New Clients and New Projects. Causa Finita reveals its plan of operations for 2018

02-02-2018


Causa Finita Commercial Real Estate Law Firm starts the year with an acquisition of new retail facilities to be provided with legal services, and with work on an entirely new project which will radically change the method of handling court disputes in Poland.

We are talking with Robert Szczepanek, Atty., the owner of Causa Finita, about details and plans of the company for this year.

Causa Finita Law Firm in its operation largely specialises in legal services for commercial real estates. What projects are you currently working on?

In our basic operations, from the beginning of the year we have been very busy handling various legal issues. We have started cooperation with new clients, by providing legal services for retail projects in Nowy Targ, Dzierżoniów, Pułtusk and Turek. We have been commissioned by Acteeum Group to provide legal services for their two projects, in  Chełm and in Andrychów. In January we started long-term cooperation with Gemini Group.

Causa Finita is also known for its pioneering software dedicated to tenants. Launched last year, Synthica software is designed for administration and management of lease agreements in commercial chains. Have any leaseholders already decided to implement the system?

Synthica software is still being refined. It contains a number of novel features, for instance a tool for monitoring the level of commercialization in shopping centres, a system of personalised reporting, and a system of automatic data update based on documents coming into force in the future, i.e. data inaccessible to applications based on adaptations of property management systems. We started the year with a pilot implementation of Synthica in  Deichmann company. There is a lot of interest in our presentations.

One of the most anticipated projects you are currently working on involves implementation of online dispute resolution system. What will be the distinctive features of this service and when will it be available?

Our company, Causa Finta S.A., is working on the first Polish fully electronic arbitration tribunal, which will foreward litigation methods into the twenty first century. Our tribunal will be called “Ultima Ratio” the First Arbitration Tribunal at the Polish Notary Association in Warsaw and it will lack all those archaic institutions due to which in Poland a single lawsuit in courts of one instance takes 14 months on average.

How are you going to achieve this?

Ultima Ratio will be an exclusively electronic tribunal. There will be no court buildings to be visited, no trials to be attended, no hearings for witnesses or parties to the dispute, no opinions of legal experts, and no evidence by inspection. All deliveries will be executed via electronic mail. At Ultima Ratio it will be possible to upload any evidence, including photographs, as well as audio or video files, into the case profile, directly from the desktop, simply by dragging and dropping, or even straight from a mobile phone. Consequently, the final verdict, as enforceable as a decision of a common court, will be issued within 21 days.

What will parties gain from your project?

Most importantly by using Ultima Ratio it will be possible to save time and money and increase effectiveness of work. Debt collection has never been so easy. In practice, debtors will not be able to unreasonably protract the proceedings because they will have to pay a fee for defence.

Ultima Ratio is developed in cooperation with an association of notaries. What role will notaries play in your tribunal?

Ultima Ratio will mainly be involved in investigation of a large number of recurrent cases resulting from mass agreements with contracting parties. Cases of this type are rarely disputable. In resolving such cases commercial courts deal with similar tasks to those which on a daily basis are handled by notaries, i.e. analysis of documents and issuing decisions based on that. Our Partners from the Polish Notary Association provide substance related endorsement to our project. As a result we gain certainty that Ultima Ratio fully complies with the law, and the rules of the tribunal are constantly verified by a group of professors with the best expertise in law in Poland. Notaries will also take care of the availability and training of arbitrators and will ensure the appropriate level of the judicial process. As a result our company may safely focus on business processes, organisational issues, on developing the electronic system and on planning promotional and marketing campaigns.

What is the current status of your project? When will it be possible for the new system to handle the first cases?

Works on Ultima Ratio have been going on for over two years. During this time we have held hundreds of meetings with Diana Kalita, Atty., and President Krzysztof Stańko, we have acquired significant archive of materials related to potential clients of the tribunal, and have conducted extensive research. At present we are completing tests of the business model and finalising documentation of the electronic system. According to out plans, Ultima Ratio will be launched in the first quarter of 2019.