The recent developments in the stock exchange market not only highlighted the insufficiency of the former legal framework with respect to investors protection, but also the high importance of the term “trust” in transactions within the capital market. Due to the fact that entering this area and getting in contact with its secrets still retains a sense of insecure “initiation”, it is preferable for the investor to seek trustworthy advisors rather than attractive advice.

Our Law Firm, aware of the above particularities, diligently studied the new regulations governing the operation of the capital market, with the sole aim to corroborate them for ourselves, thus providing quality services and gaining our clients’ trust.

In the light of the above, our Firm indicates the opportunities presented by the new stock exchange regulation to its clients and provides them with advice on every issue concerning transactions and investment activities within the Athens Stock Exchange.

More specifically, our clients receive every piece of information, which is of legal significance, on the “Athens Stock Exchange S.A.” regulation, the admission of securities in the stock market, planning the main and subsequent stock exchange transaction in the Stock Exchange Securities Market, the organization and operation of the Derivatives Market, the significance and necessity of the news bulletin as well as the reasons and the risks involved in the suspension and interruption of negotiations and the deletion of securities from the Athens Stock Exchange Securities Market.

(Head Attorney: mr Karnavas Vasilis)

In Greece, a historically naval country, Maritime Law is inevitably a legal area of particular significance, since it is necessary for the regulation one of the major domestic business activities. Our Firm, conscious of its responsibility to aid its clients in every activity, offers its services and legal support in this area of law, with a view to fully safeguard its corporate clients’ interests.

In this framework, our Firm undertakes the registration procedure for shipping companies and, subsequently, their ships to the Shipping Register, proceeds with all actions required for the reflagging of a vessel, deletion of a vessel from the Register, bank loans and mortgages on vessels, sale and shipbuilding contracts and renewal of shipping certificates.

Most importantly, our Law Firm mainly provides proper advice and suggestions on the advisability and the process of registering its client’s ships under flags offering significant tax advantages, in relation to income tax on profits or dividends, salaries of officers and crew, capital gains tax on profit transfers, etc.

(Attorney in Charge: Mrs. Tserrou Ioanna)

Labor Relations have always been a field of strong private conflict, the cause and the extent of which often reach further than expected due to misuse of exercise of both parties’ rights. The usual parameter leading to private conflicts of this sort and consisting in the exploitation of the position of power of the employer over the contracting party generates, in many cases, ill-founded claims on behalf of the employees, who take advantage of the facilitations offered by the labor legislation, which, after all, was laid down in order to defend their rights, given that they are the weaker party as far as negotiations are concerned.

In fact, the outcome of the aforementioned conflicts is in many cases judged from evidence of non absolute reliability, such as witness testimonies or ambiguously worded documents, given the fact that security provided by the press does not form a stable parameter in a great number of conventional dependent labor relations.

Cases belonging to this particular area of legal practice have always been accepted as a great challenge for our Law Offices, due to the fact that their outcome depends a great deal on the attorneys’ managing abilities and decisiveness rather than the objectiveness of documentary evidence. In these cases, the secret of success lies possibly in the legal consultant’s decision not to abuse of their role and to remain as close as possible to the facts.

(Attorney in Charge: Mr. Mammis)

The recent developments in the stock exchange market not only highlighted the insufficiency of the former legal framework with respect to investors protection, but also the high importance of the term “trust” in transactions within the capital market. Due to the fact that entering this area and getting in contact with its secrets still retains a sense of insecure “initiation”, it is preferable for the investor to seek trustworthy advisors rather than attractive advice. Our Law Firm, aware of the above particularities, diligently studied the new regulations governing the operation of the capital market, with the sole aim to corroborate them for ourselves, thus providing quality services and gaining our clients’ trust.

In the light of the above, our Firm indicates the opportunities presented by the new stock exchange regulation to its clients and provides them with advice on every issue concerning transactions and investment activities within the Athens Stock Exchange.

More specifically, our clients receive every piece of information, which is of legal significance, on the “Athens Stock Exchange S.A.” regulation, the admission of securities in the stock market, planning the main and subsequent stock exchange transaction in the Stock Exchange Securities Market, the organization and operation of the Derivatives Market, the significance and necessity of the news bulletin as well as the reasons and the risks involved in the suspension and interruption of negotiations and the deletion of securities from the Athens Stock Exchange Securities Market.

(Attorney in Charge: Mr. Skopelitis)

In Criminal Law, State-citizen relationship acquires a self-contained nature, given that the State does not operate in a contractual, monitoring or regulatory way; on the contrary, it operates suppressively, imposing penalties, in order to protect public order and individual rights. In cases pertaining to criminal law, the role of the attorney acquires a distinctive significance, given that he/ she must defend not property assets, but personal legal goods, with special reference to the individual freedom.

In this framework, handling of criminal cases demands full clarity of mind and professional responsibility on behalf of the legal representative, due to the fact that a person’s freedom may depend on a technicality, which, in any other kind of case, would probably be of minor importance as far as juridical judgment is concerned.

Our Firm’s Criminal Law Department, which is under the immediate supervision of our Senior Partner, has honored the trust of all our clients so far; this fact is corroborated by the successful handling at each stage of the trial process, thanks to our sense of responsibility nurtured by our relationship with our clients.

(Attorney in Charge: Mr. Andreas Patsis)

We believe that relations between citizens and the State are of great importance and, therefore, our Firm’s organizational structure also covers this area of interest, aiming at fully responding to our clients’ needs. The special nature of these cases, namely the very nature of the opposite party that provides the State with a principal advantage, renders our participation a prerequisite for the protection of our clients’ lawful interests.

A fundamental principle of our Firm is that the Attorney should assume a preventive rather than a suppressive role. In the light of this, solid knowledge as well as constant monitoring of the applicable legislation is the best way to protect our clients’ lawful interests. As far as administrative law is concerned, this need is even more pressing, given that the impact of European tax law gradually becomes more and more extensive in our society.

With respect to the Tax Legislation, our primary concern is to advise our -mostly corporate- clients in order to optimize their business advantages from a taxation perspective and, subsequently, indicate a number of lawful ways to avoid their implication in lawsuits against Tax Authorities.

The  services provided cover the entire range of issues arising in the context of business activity, such as taxation of corporate shares, taxation of a company’s share capital increase arising from granting of shares or stock option plans to the staff, tax deductibility of the benefits offered by the companies-employers, declaration and payment of employee withholding tax.

Moreover, our services also focus on providing support to clients (persons) who frequently seek our support in tax issues related to donations, transfers of property through parental donations and succession as well as to applicable special consumption taxes.

In addition to the above, our Firm provides its services on legal issues regarding Town Planning and Expropriation Law, including all types of Public Tenders. In such cases, our Firm can assist the client in drafting and submitting proposals and see to raising objections or appeals against the notice of Request for Tender, the acceptance of applications and the legality of the Tender conduct.

(Attorney in Charge: Mr. Kaitsas)

"Andreas Patsis & Associates" Law Offices have the know-how to support and guarantee copyright protection on any type of their clients’ rights related to products of human intellectual creation, that fall under either industrial or intellectual property law, as well as their further protection from any risk of unfair competition.

Our Firm is in the position of providing the appropriate advice and proposals on registering your trademark and safeguard your subsequent rights, for the entire course hereof following its filing, vis-a-vis any third party. We also specialize in all types of legal remedies and actions such as petitions, third-party oppositions, appeals, requests for invalidation, petitions for writ of certiorari etc, before the competent administrative committees and courts of law. This is a special area of law where we also excel and in which our clients may trust our proven experience.

Our services are not limited to trademark law. They extend to patentability, filing designs, prototypes and utility models. At the same time, our Firm is in the position of providing optimal advice on drafting agreements on copyrighted work, which pertain to the advantageous and secure transfer of ownership, licensing for their exploitation and royalties.

(Attorney in Charge: Mr. Skopelitis)

Drafting a contract is the field of concurrence of the will of two parties, which intend to transact, but not cooperate. As a consequence, even though the wills of both parties are not counterbalancing but, on the contrary, they share a common objective, each one of them is determined to ensure the optimal terms to serve its own interests. This dual nature of Contracts demands that the Attorney assumes a respective functional role when drafting agreement memoranda. Attorneys are required to protect their clients’ interests in the most advantageous ways while balancing any opposing views, so that they can reach a final agreement. To fulfill their purpose, Attorneys must, besides their academic background, fully comprehend the nature of the Contract and the role they are required to play in contract signing.

At “Andreas Patsis & Associates” Law Offices we are fully aware of the prerequisites we are required to meet in order to provide decisive aid in drafting a contract with the most advantageous terms for our clients. We believe that the diversity of contracts as well as their broad scope and distinct significance cannot be based on templates, but require the attorney to easily adjust to the nature of each case.

(Attorney in Charge: Mr. Karnavas Vasilis)

In contemporary commercial and transaction practices, the selection of a company type has ceased to be an additional potential flexibility aiming at the adaptation of business activity to the rules of the market. The functional role of companies has been elevated to such an extent that it has become the determining factor on the transactional conditions and rules. Consequently, Corporate Law is constantly evolving and must therefore cover a wide range of emerging case studies, which in some instances precede legal provisions.

Given that fixed legal advice on the establishment and governance of a company is part of a standard and rather elementary set of services, “Andreas Patsis & Associates” Law Offices concentrate on the study and anticipation of these case studies, so that the services provided to the corporate clients are way ahead of developments and create a strong attraction point for every interested party, be it a partnership or a multinational corporation.

Our advice and support are not limited to the recommendation of the appropriate company type to our client or providing a thorough article of incorporation. We believe that our work is not complete upon the issuance of an establishment license or publication of the articles of association of a Public Limited Company or the mere filing of a memorandum of incorporation. The quality of our services is defined by our intent to actively monitor all business activities as well as the operation of the company in the context of the market’s competition conditions.

Our objective is to indicate to our clients all the advisable choices so that they may safely achieve their own business purposes. In this sense, our Firm will ensure that your company runs smoothly from the standpoint of administration, as well as care for your protection from risks arising from a deficient representation, suggest investment opportunities that combine potential and security, recommend corporate restructuring practices, such as increase of the share capital or modification of corporate purpose when required, indicate whether mergers are advisable, advise on the security of investment choices, carefully examine the terms of contracts to be drafted, draft contracts and conduct auctions and confiscations for the satisfaction of corporate claims.

Our services extend to the provision of advice on the preparation and conduct of negotiations, drafting and final editing of contracts and letters of intent, managing property cases, finalizing financial and confidentiality agreements, ensuring grants or loans and generally every issue that relates to the activities of our clients, whether they are persons or legal entities.

(Attorney in Charge: Mr. Alekou)

Civil Law is the core of private law. It is Civil Law’s ethical principles that regulate every type of social and financial relations. The solid knowledge of civil law is therefore a primary obligation of every legal consultant who is asked to undertake the burden of handling their clients’ cases.

The diversity of private relations that concern the law results to the breakdown of Civil Law into relatively independent disciplines whose assignment is to regulate individually certain aspects of social relations. This fact calls for a perceptive Attorney at Law and demands a close and constant monitoring of developments in the legislation on each of these disciplines.

Our Law Firm, having full awareness of the fact that a solid knowledge of Civil Law is of particular significance as far as the quality of its services is concerned, associates with people of exceptional academic background, so as to  provide  support on every issue concerning  this specific area of law. The areas on which we can offer the most appropriate advice and solutions in order to satisfy your lawful interests include the Law of Obligations, Issues relating to Succession and Property Law, Matrimonial Disputes and Infringement of Personality Rights.

(Attorney in Charge: Mr. Ntonas)