Maksim Salahub

Professional highlights

Transaction specialist. In M&A and other transactions, often the biggest challenge is to ensure that the parties fully understand each other and make informed decisions despite legal, cultural, and commercial differences. Seamless communication and moderation are as important as knowledge of legal regulations and practices to make a transaction happen. I believe I have mastered these skills over the years and combine them efficiently with my international academic and professional background.

IP professional. Early in my career at Sorainen, I made a strategic decision to build one of the best IP practices in the market. Over the years, our team has grown to become a recognized leader in the Belarusian market. Our achievements include victories in the Supreme Court and before the appellate body of the Belarusian patent authority. We have also made significant contributions to development of the legal framework for intellectual property and its promotion in and outside Belarus. Within the regional IP practice, our purpose is to ensure dissemination of best practices and provision of top-quality service to clients in all four countries where we operate.

Curious about the workings of the clients’ business. The legal aspects of business are of course always highly important, and clients hire us to take care of them. I am always interested in getting a broader picture of the client’s business. A tour around a factory, a review of the annual report, an in-depth interview with a client or a corporate presentation help create a different type of connection with the case and with the people you do the work for. So hence my investment in an Executive MBA programme at the Baltic Management Institute, the desire to hear a client not purely on legal issues, and a readiness to leave my desk and travel for hours to see how things work in real life, not just on paper.

Helping grow the next generation of lawyers. Since 2013, I have worked as a senior lecturer at my alma mater, Belarusian State University. I annually conduct a special course on the legal profession for international law students at the Faculty of International Relations. Basically, I share everything I have learned about the business during years of working at law firms, from regulatory frameworks to launching and developing a legal career, building relations with clients and making the most out of a law degree. I am convinced that university education should transform into a more practice-oriented exercise, and am happy to contribute my time and energy to this process.