Practice Areas & Industries: Holland & Knight LLP

Practice/Industry Group Overview

Nordic: Finland

Holland & Knight has one of the strongest Nordic and Scandinavian client practices of any U.S. law firm. Our Nordic practice team consists of over 40 partners. We represent a great number of Nordic and Scandinavian corporate clients, from early stage companies to established corporations with annual revenues over U.S. $1 billion, in many different industries.

Holland & Knight is the eleventh largest law firm in the United States and among the 16 largest in the world. The firm has over 1,200 lawyers practicing in 33 offices throughout the U.S. and internationally.

Holland & Knight combined its practice with Haight Gardner Poor & Havens (known for its representation of Scandinavian clients) in 1997, and with Gilbert, Segall and Young (known for its representation of Finnish clients and also one of two U.S. firms to have an established office in Helsinki) in 2001.

In Finland, Holland & Knight now practices in strategic alliance with Turkki Kokko Heliö Oy, with offices in Helsinki, Tampere, Jyväskylä and Oulu.

We Understand and Serve the Needs of Nordic and Scandinavian Business Our Nordic practice team concentrates on understanding and serving the particular needs of Nordic and Scandinavian businesses. We have been serving Nordic and Scandinavian businesses in the U.S. and internationally for over 100 years.

With several attorneys of Nordic or Scandinavian descent, we are bicultural Nordic/Scandinavian and American. We know both cultures and understand the business and legal differences. Included on our team are attorneys who speak Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish and Danish.

Becoming your bridge to business success in the challenging U.S. market is what we work to accomplish for our clients. Due to differences in our legal systems, a business practice that is unobjectionable in Europe can sometimes be contrary to law and practice in the U.S. The cost of making a mistake in the U.S. can be substantial compared to the Nordic countries due to, among other things, the litigation environment in the U.S.

Through our well-known Foreign Lawyer Trainee Program, we have each year from one to six young Nordic lawyers working with us as interns. They can assist with your matters ¿ from a Nordic perspective. We continue to work with more than 500 lawyers worldwide who have interned at our offices since inception of this program in 1949. By far, the largest number of our interns have been from Scandinavian or Nordic countries.

We have had 15 foreign trainees from Finland, the first of these in 1963, as well as trainees from Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Iceland.

We are members of and active in the Finnish-American, Danish-American, Norwegian-American and Swedish-American Chambers of Commerce, giving back to the Nordic and Scandinavian communities (as well as being nationally recognized for our pro bono work).

Services Available

"One Stop" for Your Needs

In addition, you can tap all of the specialties and resources of Holland & Knight by drawing on our firm-wide capabilities in over 100 areas of the law. We have the specialization to serve all your legal needs delivering the highest level of professional quality work and service. Our "one-firm" structure positions us to support your most complex matters at all levels with comprehensive and value-added service.

Our in-depth experience that is relevant to you includes the following:

• acquisitions of U.S. or Latin American companies (finding the target, structuring the transaction, preparing and negotiating the acquisition agreement, due diligence, financing, closing)
• corporate formations and start-up of business in the U.S., with all the accompanying tax and structuring advice
• tax advice: our tax lawyers work regularly with the Norway-U.S., Sweden-U.S., Denmark-U.S. and Finland-U.S. tax treaties, transfer pricing and other tax issues in advising our Nordic clients
• contracts of all kinds (including cross-border distributorships, licensing of intellectual property (IP), joint ventures, consulting agreements, employment agreements and others)
• joint ventures and strategic alliances
• IP: patent, trademark, copyright and trade secrets counseling; filings and litigation
• bank loans, structured finance and project finance
• employment law
• immigration and visas
• commercial real estate: acquisitions and leasing
• dispute resolution: litigation, arbitration and mediation
• government regulatory, licensing and legislative matters: federal, state and local
• securities: compliance, regulation and litigation
• product liability: litigation and counseling to minimize claims
• white collar crime, fraud and other litigation

We have the national and international capabilities to serve your expansion in: