Fondia’s year 2016

At Fondia year2016 began, continued and ended with the essence of our existence, great and interesting client work. At the end of the year, we have well over 180 Legal Department as a Service (LDaaS) partners who rely on us to manage their daily legal issues. In addition, our 15-person transaction and project team has been really busy with mergers, acquisitions, IPOs, dispute resolution and other projects.

Fondia’s unique culture and working environment are built on the values that have guided our daily activities since the beginning. In spring 2016, we clarified these values as a group. We did not want to change these strengths but rather re-write them. Today, our values are: ‘Dare to create’, ‘My place to work’, ‘Law made smart’, ‘Give and receive’, powered by ‘Pride and passion’. Living these values in our daily work further strengthens our culture and is visible to our clients. In June, almost all of our LDaaS clients responded to our service satisfaction survey. We were very pleased and grateful when the results of the survey showed that 97% of our clients would recommend our services.

Digitalisation was a widely discussed topic in 2016, both here and elsewhere. Digitalisation affects all industries and we want to ensure that we possess the appropriate expertise and knowledge to help our clients successfully navigate in an increasingly digital business world. With this in mind, we invited a wide range of companies from different industries to showcase how they are using technology to develop their business models, processes, customer experience and strategy. Our ‘Digitalisation is for everyone’ seminar, held on 3 November, attracted nearly 300 participants, a large number of listeners via a live stream, and generated a great deal of discussion on social media.

Naturally, digitalisation and its potential also affect our business. The Financial Timeshighlighted the use of technology more strongly in its annual Innovative Lawyers report than in previous years: “lawyers have embraced developing their own technology”. Fondia has been in the forefront of that movement for several years. The main initiative in 2016 has been our new collaboration and communication platform, MyFondia, for the use of our clients and lawyers. We piloted the platform in the autumn with a few clients and will make it available to all clients in the new year.

During the year, we have also received more recognition both internationally and nationally. In March, Fondia won the silver medal in the ‘Mould-breaking firm’ category at the MPF Awards 2016. The award panel stated in their reasoning that Fondia’s LDaaS service has led many sizable companies to select Fondia as their legal service provider. The year culminated in the recognition we received on 5 December: The Regional Organisation of Enterprises in Helsinki selected Fondia as the company of the year in Helsinki. Fondia’s innovative and mould-breaking concept and work culture were some of the reasons highlighted in the selection criteria. We are incredibly happy and proud to receive this award.

We got to enjoy media publicity again in a few great pieces. Helsingin Sanomat wrote a very interesting profile of Fondia’s founder Marianne Saarikko Janson in which Marianne shed light on the background of Fondia’s success as an innovator in the legal industry. Niclas Gottlieb, who started as the Managing Director of Fondia Sweden in August, talked about our goals in Kauppalehti. Towards the end of the year, we hosted journalists from leading US news media outlets, The Washington Post and The Huffington Post, who specifically wanted to learn about how successful business and employee wellbeing come together at Fondia.

At the end of the year, there are nearly 110 of us, and both the Stockholm and Tallinn offices have grown. We will cheerfully begin our Christmas holidays and are looking forward to 2017, which looks to be another year of growth and business development.

A warm thank you to all our clients and partners for your collaboration this year. We wish you a merry Christmas, and luck and happiness for 2017!