In celebration of German Unity Day

As today is German Unity Day, I thought it would be appropriate to celebrate something that embodies one of that country's many strengths.

Even though our focus at LCN Legal is global and not country-specific, Germany has a very special place in my heart. As part of my law degree I spent a year at university in Saarbrücken, studying German law. My first job in law was in the legal department of Sharp Electronics in Hamburg, an amazing city with all the rough and the smooth you could wish for.

For the first nine years of my life as a qualified lawyer, I worked mainly for German, Swiss and Austrian clients. And when I moved to KPMG in the early 2000s, it was to help reinforce the German desk for KPMG’s law firm in the UK.

Germany excels in many areas, of course, but I'm sure that one of the first that springs to mind for most people is its world-class engineering. And in my opinion the motorcycle above epitomises that.

It is – as you'll know if you're a biker or a longtime subscriber to this newsletter with an excellent memory – the first motorbike model ever produced by BMW, in 1923. To people then it must have looked like it had been transported from the future, and some of its many innovations are indeed still used today.

Shaping the future. Beautifully designed. Form and function in perfect harmony. All phrases that, I'm sorry to say, could not be used to describe many of the intercompany agreements we are asked to review at LCN Legal. But we continue to work with the rest of the TP community to try to change that.

It's a long, hard road! But I believe that we'll get there together.