Gold Magazine March - April 2013, Issue 24 | Page 36

CORPORATE LAW

HAPPINESS
IS A SUCCESSFUL
LAW T
FIRM

ANGELOS PAPHITIS
WAS IN HIGH
SCHOOL

WHEN A FRIEND
MENTIONED THAT HIS
FATHER WAS A LAWYER.

SOMETHING
CLICKED AND
HE HAS NEVER
LOOKED
BACK.
By John Vickers,
Photos by Jo Michaelides

en years ago, the then
24-year-old Angelos
Paphitis returned
to Cyprus, ready to
begin his legal career
after obtaining his
law degrees and
completing his training as a barrister
in London. Had he been given a
glimpse of the future, even he would
have been pleasantly surprised to see
where he would find himself a decade
later: running his own award-winning
firm of ten lawyers, housed in offices
that he designed himself and enjoying
a growing reputation in the corporate
and company law sector. He would
have been even more surprised had
he foreseen as a youngster the way his
chosen career would develop, since
everything happened by chance. Unlike
many lawyers, Paphitis was not born into
the profession, nor did he have family
members working in the legal sector.
“My choice had nothing to do with
the family,” he recalls. “I was talking one
day with my best friend at school about
what we were going to do in later life
and he mentioned that his father was a
lawyer and I just liked the sound of it!
The same day I went home and told my
Dad that I wanted to become a lawyer”.
And did the reality turn out to be close
to how he had imagined it as an impressionable youngster? He has no doubts
about this:
“Yes and I have absolutely no regrets.
I would do the same thing all over
again,” he says. This would mean again
giving up his great love and interest in
graphic design but in reality he did not
abandon it entirely. When it came to
designing the firm’s offices, there was no
need to appoint an interior decorator:
Angelos did it all himself.
That was almost 7 years ago. When
asked to analyse the reasons for the
firm’s success, Paphitis puts it partly
down to the fact that he decided from

the outset to offer a specialized service:
“When I started work as a sole practitioner, I could see that the market was
already full of lawyers so I realised that I
needed to focus on what I knew best. I
had always been interested in corporate
law and company law and in 2006 I
obtained a postgraduate diploma in tax
law in Zurich, so before opening my
own firm, my whole background had
been formed by the corporate legal profession. With this in mind I decided to
promote myself exclusively as a specialist
in company law and this is one of the
main reasons why I have managed to
attract the corporate clientele”.
As the years have passed, the firm has
expanded to become a full service firm
and ten lawyers are currently working
at A.G. Paphitis & Co LLC. At 34, the
founder is delighted to be leading what
he describes as “the best team that I have
ever had”, citing the fact that all his associates share his philosophy of putting
service to clients above all, “even if this
means sacrificing our personal lives” as
one of the keys to their combined success.
The focus of the firm continues to
be on corporate law, and most of the
awards that it has won in recent years
are related to its specialist areas – company law, corporate governance, etc –
and, in particular, international business.
“As we grow as a firm we are dealing with more local clients but we have
always worked mainly with international
companies, Paphitis explains. “Two years
ago I would have said that 90% of our
business is international. Today it’s probably 70% because we have more local
clients. And this is why I spend a great
deal of time travelling. I believe in the
importance of developing and maintaining personal relationships with clients so I
visit them frequently”.
Ten or 15 years ago, finding international clients was much easier than it is
today. The days of being able to sit back

36 Gold THE INTERNATIONAL INVESTMENT, FINANCE & PROFESSIONAL SERVICES MAGAZINE OF CYPRUS

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07/03/2013 11:42