The team of the Faculty of Law in Ljubljana is the winner of the second regional Big Deal competition held in Skopje, Macedonia. The team from the host city law school came in second, followed by the teams from Zagreb, Belgrade and Kragujevac.The aim of the Big Deal project is to deliver practical knowledge of corporate law to the very best law school students in the region, through simulation of a sale and purchase transaction. This provides students with an opportunity to address practical legal issues that occur in commercial setting. TLA (Top-tier Legal Adriatic) lawyers pass on their knowledge and experience to students and assist them through their subsequent graduate period. Students gain invaluable practical experience which is likely to be of great benefit to them in future.
This year’s finals differed from the previous one in that the students faced more complex tasks and additional requirements. TLA lawyers made matters more complicated for the teams by introducing unresolved issues and potential legal disputes, as typically encountered in a sale-purchase process of a company. Most of the teams have handled this process quite well, even in situations requiring expert legal assistance beyond the scope of corporate law.
In the end, it was the matter of performance nuances that settled the final ranking of the teams – concluded the lawyers evaluating the students.
Nikola Poznanović, partner at JPM Janković Popović Mitić, the law firm that initiated the Big Deal project, commented:
“I have been grading students since the first Big Deal project and I have to say that this year the competition between the participating teams was fiercest and most serious so far. This year’s Big Deal project has once again demonstrated that law school students in Serbia and the region truly possess great potential and some of them can indeed stand shoulder to shoulder with experienced lawyers. In addition to absorbing new knowledge and precious experience, the Big Deal project also has immense networking and knowledge-sharing potential for participating students. The Big Deal contacts transform individuals, instill in them peculiar energy to further embrace their professional calling and put in serious effort in building solid career foundations for future. Together with professors and mentors leading the participating teams, I believe we have done a lot for these wonderful youngsters by enabling them to get a true feel for complexities of a commercial transaction”