Bridging Cultures in the Legal Arena: International Arbitration and Dispute Resolution with Clarisse von Wunschheim

In this episode of Business Beyond Borders, we welcome Clarisse von Wunschheim, Partner and Head of Switzerland-China Cross-Border Solutions at Altenburger. Clarisse takes us on a deep dive into the world of international arbitration, sharing her multicultural expertise and strategies for bridging different cultures in global dispute resolution.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Navigating the cultural landscapes that influence global dispute resolution, with a focus on the subtleties of 'face' and hierarchical sensitivities in Sino-European business interactions
• Practical insights into managing cross-border disputes, drawn from Clarisse's experiences working alongside Chinese colleagues and handling cases across continents
• The future of dispute resolution, including the unique advantages of the Swiss arbitration system and the transformative potential of commercial mediation
• The role of technology in revolutionizing legal practice, and the irreplaceable value of human interaction in cross-cultural negotiations

Tune in to find out more!

Links:

• Bluente's Website: www.bluente.com
• Clarisse's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clarisse-von-wunschheim-950561/
• Our Socials: @bluente.official (Instagram and TikTok)

Chapters

• 0:11 Cross-Cultural Challenges in International Arbitration
• 7:36 Cross-Cultural Challenges in International Arbitration
• 13:39 Navigating International Legal Practice in China
• 21:53 The Future of International Dispute Resolution
• 30:34 Technology in Cross-Cultural Dispute Resolution

Transcript

Daphne: 0:11

Welcome to another episode of Business Beyond Borders. Today I'm really excited to have with us to kickstart 2024. Clarisse Von Wunschheim . She's currently a partner and also the head of Switzerland, china and China. I'm really excited to have with us Clarice Von Von Schein to help us kick us off for 2024. She's currently a partner and also the head of Switzerland China Crossbody Solutions at Altemburg and I'm really excited to have her share with us more about her experiences today. Welcome, clarice, thank you, daphne.

Clarisse: 0:58

Thank you for having me. I'm excited, too, about all the questions you're going to ask me.

Daphne: 1:03

So maybe we'll kickstart with the very first question. Maybe could you share with us your journey in the field of cross-border dispute resolution, what inspired you to specialize in this area, and maybe also touch a little bit about your background, which I understand to be quite special and quite unique in the international area.

Clarisse: 1:24

Sure, with Clarice. So let me start first with my personal background. So I'm a Swiss citizen. I'm also a Swiss lawyer. I studied law in Switzerland. I tell you a bit more about that in a minute. But my father is from Austria, my mother is from the French part of Switzerland, so French-speaking part of Switzerland, and my father used to work for the farmer industry, so he got sent a lot of places. So when I was a kid we lived in different places. So I was born in Mexico, but then we moved to Switzerland, then to Germany. I started school in Germany. We moved back to Switzerland, but I went to school in France. Then I studied in Freiburg and I decided to move to Zurich for the bar exam.

Clarisse: 2:05

So, at that point I was pretty much Swiss, but with a bit of an international exposure, probably a bit more than the average Swiss person. And the way I ended up working in cross-border dispute resolution was actually by chance. So, as I mentioned to you, I studied in Freiburg that was 25 years ago A bit more even, go, let me tell and back then one of my professors was Pierre Terciers. He also became later on the president of the ICC Court of Arbitration and he started back then that was late 90s to teach in arbitration and he had already quite a big arbitration practice and he was always looking for students to help him act the secretaries or help him with the cases.

Clarisse: 2:51

So that's how I actually ended up in the world of arbitration. It's because, after my second year of law school, professor Terciers approached me to help him to work for him as an assistant on his cases, and that's how I discovered the world of arbitration and I just loved it. I just knew, hey, this is what I want to do. It's cross-cultural, it's international, it's close to the economy, close to business, and this was everything that I liked in law. I ended up doing international arbitration.

Daphne: 3:23

And do you think your background, having lived in different countries and also your parents coming from different parts of the world, helped to shape your global perspective in relation to what you're taking on now?

Clarisse: 3:38

Certainly I think it was a meeting of interests and minds, in the sense that arbitration, international arbitration, gave me a platform to use my languages, to use my cross-cultural understanding and also, when I saw all these things going on between cultures and between languages which, on one side, I was a bit familiar with and, on the other side, showed me a whole lot more which I didn't know, so definitely it had a big impact on my choice to go the path of international arbitration.

Daphne: 4:13

Yes, yeah, interesting that you mentioned that you speak a number of languages. Could you share with us which languages can you speak?

Clarisse: 4:20

Sure, so I was raised bilingual French and German. So at home we always spoke French, but my father's mother tongue is German and, as I mentioned, I went to school in Germany. So from little on we spoke both languages, french and German. Okay, then obviously I learned English at school. It's what some everybody learns English. Actually, I went to school in France, but there also you learn English. And then, because I was born in Mexico and my mother has a very strong connection to Latin America, my parents lived a few years in Mexico, where my brother and I was born, so we had also a lot of Spanish speaking friends. So I then also learned Spanish.

Clarisse: 4:59

I spent a few months in Barcelona where I learned Spanish and then, after my bar exam, I decided to move to China where I spent over nine years working and living. So I learned some Mandarin. I'm fluent in Mandarin for everyday's life. I have a certain understanding and mastery of Chinese at work, but I'm far from being proficient the way I am in English. So it's four and a half languages if you count that area as a star, but that's still very impressive.

Daphne: 5:33

It's still very impressive, but maybe we'll pause on your experiences in Beijing. We'll touch on that in a bit. But rounding back to reflecting on your education background, which you have alluded to a little bit earlier, as well as your professional background so far, how has that helped to shape your approach towards international arbitration?

Clarisse: 5:58

I mean it positioned me in a field of international arbitration which was cross, regional and especially in the axis Europe, China, obviously with my experience also in China.

Clarisse: 6:09

So I got a lot of exposure and interest also in European, Sino European disputes, but more largely everything that is cross culture in the sense that two very different cultures bump into each other and sometimes you know you have one contract and you think it's clear, but the two parties have a very different understanding of what it actually means and what happens if things change. So it really positioned me in an in an axiom of cross cultural Sino European disputes. But actually what I learned about the cultural gap is applicable also to to other cultures. So I've also dealt with cases, for example, involving Middle Eastern parties or Latin American parties, where you also have a cultural gap. So the cultures are different but the challenges raised by the gap between cultures is similar and it's all about having an open mind and understand that things are done differently in different parts of the world, even though the rules might be the same, but the way they live in applied definitely not.

Daphne: 7:15

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And and you know diving a little bit more about the cultural differences that you have mentioned In relation to European and Chinese businesses that you have been helping a lot of your clients with, how do you see these cultural differences that you've observed affect the arbitration proceedings?

Clarisse: 7:36

Actually, it affects really every stage. It starts at the very beginning with expectation how it's going to be like and what outcome is going to be, or why do you go to arbitration.

Clarisse: 7:48

So there the expectations can be quite different. It then also affects the fears. Parties don't have the same fears of the process. Often Chinese parties have a lot of save a face saving issues, that they don't want to admit certain things or that certain things be discovered, or they also have a very strong pressure, hierarchical, in their company. If you deal with SOEs, there's a whole bureaucratic process to follow, so the concerns are not the same. Then, when you deal with the, with the normal, I would say, european private company, the expectations, the things you have to deal with, the pressure, the constraints you have to deal with can be very different. And also the budget, jeremy.

Clarisse: 8:36

Speaking Asian parties, in particular Chinese party, they want to have a much stronger control over the costs. They want to know in advance how much it's going to cost. Yeah, and they're much tougher, I think, in the fee arrangement negotiations. Then then European or US companies are. It's also definitely a big difference in how you tackle the entire process. And then also, what is a big difference is the management of information, because the way that parties communicate are very different, and I mean China is the country of. You know of digitalization and it's. They don't have the same traditions and the same processes in producing information, storing information, so that's very different and that has a big impact on how you manage evidence.

Clarisse: 9:40

There's also a difference in how to use witnesses. Yeah, you know, there's also a question of of feeling at ease in being a witness. For Asian parties it's much. I think the hurdle is much higher because people tend to be a bit more introverted or a bit more deferral from from authority. Yeah, don't be necessarily at ease coming and just telling the whole story. So the way you deal with witnesses is also can be quite different. And, generally speaking, the strategy, what you want to get out of the arbitration you just want to put pressure. Do you want to settlements? Do you want to really negotiate a deal? To just want to, you know, win and get the money. So this is can also be quite different.

Daphne: 10:26

Very interesting. And then, on the flip side of things, from dispute angle, what are some of the more common types of disputes that you've seen in Sino European business sectors?

Clarisse: 10:39

Okay. So what I have seen is largely influenced also, but by my own skills. So, for example, I'm not an IP specialist, so I haven't seen a lot of pure IP disputes. But that's because it's not my area of work. I know that there are a lot of these disputes. What I've seen personally is a lot of distribution agency sales disputes involving licensing, a lot of technology transfer issues where you have a certain, you know, oem agreements, for example, a certain transfer technology combined with the supply agreement, and then there are issues, be it of trademark or license or know how infringements or quality issue. So everything in the manufacturing area export, import, and then in the last years, increasingly post M&A disputes, especially of Chinese companies acquiring companies in Europe and then having dispute after the acquisition regarding price adjustments, warranty claims, things like that.

Daphne: 11:39

And have you seen this? Disputes, cross-border disputes, increasing over time.

Clarisse: 11:45

No, I would say it has. It's a wave. There are years there are a lot of disputes and then there are periods again where it's a bit more quiet. So I would say it's been pretty steady. You can see an evolution. For example, I can see a clear trend of Chinese parties being increasingly also the claimants. If I look 15 years back, when I was in China, 80% of the time Chinese would be, the respondent.

Clarisse: 12:15

That's not the case anymore. Now. Chinese parties are definitely often also the claimant in arbitration or cross claimant, so that has definitely changed. But increase in number of disputes. It's really cycle by cycle, sometimes more, sometimes less. I couldn't say that it's like that, but I haven't seen a decrease.

Daphne: 12:38

That's for sure, and I would love to touch a little bit more around your previous working experience in baiting. You are in firms like DLA Piper, which is a UK hate quarter firm, and also Jones Day, which is a US hate quarter firm but physically based and located in China, and how has that, you know, change your perspectives towards, course, border arbitration cases that you're handling right now, having previously been based there?

Clarisse: 13:08

I don't think it affected that much the cases themselves because my colleagues in both firms were always Chinese. I worked a lot with Tao Jingzhou. He was my boss at both the LA Piper and also at Jones Day, so the colleagues I had were Chinese. So it didn't really impact the cases as such. What it did impact was the culture of the firm and the relationship between the headquarters and the local branch office.

Clarisse: 13:39

In Switzerland we have an expression to describe the difference in culture between the Swiss German, the German speaking part of Switzerland and the French speaking part of Switzerland. We call it the Röschty Graben. Röschty is a typical Swiss German dish made out of potato and Graben is sort of a whole. So it's just this whole between these two language cultures that even in Switzerland is dead. A small country is an issue. And there I could really see the huge gap between UK firm mentality trying to do things in China the UK way. That didn't work well, and then also the same for Jones Day, but differently, the US management also trying to do certain things in China, the US way. And it was this difficulty of imposing if you want foreign standards in a completely different environment and certain standards you have to stick to you can't compromise and others you should and you must compromise and finding this right balance between adapting to the culture while ensuring that minimum standards are met. That was quite an interesting experience.

Daphne: 14:52

Any advice that you have for lawyers who are looking to move from international firms to locate themselves and practice in a country like China, or law firms who are looking to expand the operations that, any advice or considerations that they should have as they think about the move.

Clarisse: 15:12

I think I would encourage any young lawyer to go anywhere else than where they come from and just try and get this exposure to different cultures, different way of doing things.

Clarisse: 15:23

I think it's even now neuroscientifically proven that when you do that, your genes develop in a way that you develop really new skills and you grow in a way you would never grow if you stay always in the same place that you've been. So definitely encourage all lawyers to go and just gather this experience and go there really with an open mind and first listen and watch before you try, before you start teaching what you have to teach, because we all have to learn. We can all learn from each other, right, every one of us has to can teach the other something, but the first step should be go, watch and listen and then see where you can add value. Then, for the firms, I honestly think that now, as concerns mainland China, I wouldn't recommend, I wouldn't advise any firm to go there and set up an office if they haven't done so yet. I think the trend is rather closing up their rep office rather than opening up new offices.

Clarisse: 16:21

Here I can say the trend I've seen, if I compared to 20 years ago. I arrived in China early 2005. So 19 years ago, right, and there it was, with the case that the know how on international dispute resolution was with the international firms. And I saw this gap between the big client, the big cases where with the local Chinese firms yeah, the know how where with the foreign firms. So that led to some corporations but it didn't always go well because they were afraid they would steal the client or that didn't always work well. And this is what led me back then to open up my own structure, which was called one Woon Charbon, which I try to to actually sell my know how to local firms so that they could use it on on their cases.

Daphne: 17:14

Yeah, very interesting that you touch on the Woon Char that you have founded previously. You have also touched on why you decided on what inspired you to start this. I would love to touch on that a little bit more and understand. How did Woon Char really contribute to the field of international arbitration?

Clarisse: 17:36

Yes, I mean Woon Char was a small structure. I started it alone with my right hand, michael gin Michael, if you hear that, thanks again for everything he did for Woon Char and then we wrote. We grew to be a team of about eight, eight people, so I had two Chinese lawyers and I also had a bunch of trainees, of students that came to do internships at my firm, and we did different things. So we were very active on a knowledge development and business development side. And then also, of course, we had our work and what we did on the know how and business development side.

Clarisse: 18:12

For example, we launched back then a project on clover arbitration where we summarized and analyzed over 500 decisions of the Supreme People's Court in arbitration, and I did that with a lot of trainees, a lot of help. So that was definitely one way we helped spread knowledge about people's court case law among foreign practitioners, but also a way to help these students translate not just by language but in cultural terms also a Chinese legal decision in a way that a foreign readership would understand what was happening. So I think that was a project that really worked on both sides, and what we also did is a lot of events, a lot of workshops. In particular, twice we did a workshop for Chinese lawyers on cross examination. So we had about 15 lawyers flew in from the US, from Europe, and we set up a two days workshop on how to conduct proper cross examinations.

Clarisse: 19:16

And we did a lot of other events. So we brought in foreign practitioners, we brought them together with Chinese lawyers, especially the younger ones. There were the ones really interested in that and we brought together the communities and and try to bring a platform to exchange knowledge, know how and experience and and I do think we did have an impact on in Beijing at least on this younger generation of lawyers that was starting in their career and they realized that international arbitration was a field where they could also come in, become active and actually shape the future. Now, when you look at international arbitration, how many Chinese parties are involved, how many Chinese lawyers are involved? They're really leaving their mark there and it's they should.

Daphne: 20:01

That's very inspiring how you started and seeded something and how and that has definitely transpired to a lot of lawyers now who have benefited from your organization back then and let them flourish in the field. I hope so. It's just something very small.

Clarisse: 20:16

When you look at the size of China, it's kind of a little drop in the water, but but still, sometimes it doesn't take much water and something grows out of it. So I hope that was the case.

Daphne: 20:28

Yes, One more, one more question before we move on to the another area, which is on mediation, is that, in your experience, based on the different rules that you have seen like unsitual ICC, swiss, swiss rules what are some of the unique challenges and opportunities that are presented by these rules in the field of international arbitration?

Clarisse: 20:51

Okay, so let me maybe start with the opportunities, and I would actually describe them a bit differently. Between the three rules that you cited, I think the ICC is really one of the oldest and most international sort of rules. So, even though the ICC is based in Paris and sometimes, especially from an Asian perspective, icc is considered western, it's actually not.

Clarisse: 21:19

It's really an international chamber of commerce with all the interests from everywhere in the world come together and when you look at the rules, a civil law lawyer won't consider them to be civil law and a common law lawyer won't consider them to be common law either. So for me, the big advantage of the ICC rule that it's really the condensation of a hundred years of international commerce coming together. I think that's really the big advantage of the ICC. Yeah, it's historical roots and its international aspect For the Swiss rules.

Clarisse: 21:53

I think it would be too much to say that the Swiss arbitration center is really international center. It's certainly not as international as the ICC but because of our unique position in Europe and also this historical neutrality that we've had, we've learned to be sort of a link between different regions, different cultures. So we do have a certain flexibility and pragmatism that is reflected in the rules that you don't find in the ICC. The ICC, you can see it's institutional, it's a bit rigid, it's very clear and organized and the Swiss arbitration rules have much more flexibility for the tribunal, for example, to take account particularities of the case, so that it can be pragmatic and more flexible. So I would say that's the advantage of the Swiss rule.

Clarisse: 22:48

The challenge, of course, is that the Swiss wall are not so well known as the ICC and they're the Swiss rules. So maybe sometimes people think we don't want the Swiss rules for a Swiss party. We would like neutral rules for if a Swiss party is involved. But they are pretty much neutral in the sense that they're not influenced by any Swiss commercial interests or so. And the unsectoral rules?

Clarisse: 23:15

I think the big advantage is that they create order in cows, where the parties didn't really know what they were doing and they provide a minimum set of rules, a framework to work with which I think is also very flexible. The downside is that it is extremely flexible and where the parties are not familiar with arbitration and don't know how to use that flexibility, flexibility turns into cows and if you don't have an arbitral tribunal which is determined, which has a strong grasp and is determined to bring order in cows, then it can be quite chaotic, lengthy and a bit frustrating for parties which are not familiar with the process.

Daphne: 24:03

Okay, very interesting, and one of the one of the key areas that you advocate quite strongly for is commercial mediation, and I would love to touch on that a little bit more from your experience. What makes commercial mediation a preferable option over litigation or arbitration?

Clarisse: 24:23

When I thought about this question, one sentence came into my mind it's the sky is the limit, and in mediation, the sky is the limit. It all depends on what the parties are willing to do. In arbitration, even though you are in a much more flexible setting than in court proceedings, you have a framework defined, so the framework is your limit, it's not the sky. And once you go into mediation, everything becomes possible. And for me, I think mediation is definitely a much more constructive dispute resolution method than arbitration.

Clarisse: 25:00

You know we all have good and bad days and my bad days. Sometimes. I think you know what all we do in arbitration is damage mitigation. We're looking back with pointing finger and said you were right, you were wrong, okay, you get that much and move forward. But for businesses, yeah, it's better than nothing, but it doesn't really create value. And mediation allows us to discover avenues and to go avenues that actually are able to convert a dispute which has a cost into something that has value. Right, and that's the magic of a well done mediation is that you can convert this dispute and cost and damage element in something of value for both parties.

Daphne: 25:46

Are there any examples that you can share with us where commercial mediation has provided a unique solution that wouldn't have been possible to the other dispute resolution methods?

Clarisse: 25:58

Sure, I'll cheat a little bit because it's an example where it was done by negotiation, not mediation. But the two lawyers involved, including me, were very much pro mediation type of lawyer, so we adopted a lot of mediation techniques in the way we handle the dispute. So it was a dispute between a German mid-sized company and a Chinese company in the pharma industry. So the German company was distributing a certain product to the Chinese, who was then mixing it up and distributing it on a wider scale in China, and they got a dispute where the Chinese party stopped to pay the licensing fees and the German company, you know, searched for arbitration Switzerland, china and they kind of found me. So they contacted me and they said we want to sue the Chinese distributor. And I said stop, stop, stop, stop. I said first why the Chinese distributor stopped paying the fees.

Daphne: 26:56

We don't know.

Clarisse: 26:57

I say that, but that might be an important information to understand. Why is he not paying a fee? There must be a reason. He's not just not paying the fee just to annoy you, right? So I said I wouldn't you know? Start arbitration right away. I would first try to understand what's what's going on. So I worked together with a consulting firm I know in China who contacted the Chinese party and had several talks to understand actually what was. What was the problem? And the problem was that the Chinese party hadn't yet really figured out how to manufacture the product they wanted to sell and hadn't really started selling the product, so they didn't want to pay licensing fees when they weren't actually selling the product.

Clarisse: 27:42

But, on the other side. It wasn't. German parties thought if they didn't manage to figure out their manufacturing process. So then we started a big negotiation, talks also with the other Chinese parties lawyer, but it didn't bring any, it didn't yield any results. So after a few months we had to initiate arbitration anyway, but then then again gave an impetus or new dynamic in the whole process and after a few months actually it was only after the arbitration was initiated that the Chinese partner hired a lawyer and the fact that the lawyer was involved with a good you know mindset also sort of looking for solutions, we were then able, between lawyers, to start talking together and figuring out what to do.

Clarisse: 28:31

So my client was originally claiming for 1.2 million euros in licensing fees, right, right, and we were then able, with the lawyer, to convert that into a sale of technology contract where my client got 3 million cash Right. So at this point where he was running after 1.2 million which he would never have seen, because even if had won the arbitration, he would have had to enforce that against the Chinese company in China, so that would have taken ages Within six months he got 3 million euro cash and sold his technology to the Chinese party, who could then do whatever the Chinese party wanted to do with it in China. So that's what I meant is, if you're really open to put everything on the table and look at other possibilities, then you can really transform a frustrating dispute into a constructive deal for both parties.

Daphne: 29:25

I love it. It's achieving a win-win situation with that. Yes, yes, definitely. And now looking ahead, what kind of trends do you foresee in international arbitration and commercial mediation in the next decade, especially in relation to China and Europe these two regions so?

Clarisse: 29:46

my dream is that commercial mediation would become more popular. I still don't understand why it is so underused in Europe in the commercial field, and even in China you have this mediation chamber, conciliation, but it's not yet a fully party-owned mediation process, and I think there's a lot of reason and a lot of opportunity for mediation in this cross-cultural setting because, as I mentioned, it just opens up a lot of more opportunities. So my dream is definitely that commercial mediation takes more room. Whether that's going to be the case, I don't know.

Daphne: 30:28

Let's see We'll play this back a couple of years down and see.

Clarisse: 30:34

The other trends I see well, certainly on the technological and digitalization field. I think that small value dispute will largely be automatized out of efficiency and costs. So now, also with the AI, we will have the tools to make an automatic process where you input certain information and you get a result. You get a decision or a decision proposal. So I think for everything that is small value, technology will have a huge impact, I think, on the level of very high value, cross-cultural, complex disputes. I think technology will act as a powering tool for the lawyers and for the arbitrators to process more information, to process better information, to get maybe other angles to the case. So I do think it will make the process probably more efficient.

Clarisse: 31:32

But there's always the risk that Once you get more efficient to do more, so I'm not sure it's going to, you know, lessen the work. When people say I know it's going to take work away for the lawyers, I'm not sure there will be other risks arising with that. Use of technology will give another type of work, maybe to other kind of lawyers, but I don't really see the amount of work diminishing. I think the way we work and the way we use technology will change and we will have to look at technology not just as, let's say, not just as an assistant, but as a sparring partner, where you test things with technology or you use technology to package something that you weren't able to package in a certain way, or to test your own knowledge. So I think that's probably the trend from a from a mere assistant to actually a sparring partner.

Daphne: 32:29

Yeah, that's quite interesting way to think about it being a sparring partner and have you test some of the logic. I mean even on our end. Sometimes, when we are testing some of the content that we're developing, we also use some of the AI tools out there to make sure that we get it right or pass through some of the checks and balances.

Clarisse: 32:48

But I can tell you one thing what AI will not be able to do for ages is sit in a hearing room and feel what is going on and see on the faces of people you know, on the answers on the questions to get this, this intuition, Of course one can say intuition, at the end of the day is just condensed experience and if you have enough data, then even a machine could come to what you would call intuition. But I think this is over estimating the quality and quantity of data that we can feed a machine to get to that point and I think it is underestimating the I would say, I would dare to say the supernatural aspect of intuition. I don't think intuition is merely a condensation of experience. I think intuition is a connection to something transcendence that tells you something about your environment. That is written, you know it's, it's just there and it's a connection to that. It's not. It's not a piece of information, piece of data just on a piece of paper.

Daphne: 33:59

Yes, yes, and a lot of times, especially in these dispute resolutions, it also boils down to the emotions, the people, and making sure that they feel like they have reached a win-win situation.

Clarisse: 34:12

Yes, and sometimes you know at the hearing or in the brief you can read between the lines when you know the culture, when you've been there, and then they say something, but you know what they mean is is something else or something a bit different, and I don't see a machine being able to read in the lines until a long, long time. So I'm not afraid of technology. I'm looking forward to having better sparing partners, of course.

Daphne: 34:41

One last question from me, as you think back into your professional experiences so far what has been the most rewarding aspect of working in this very cross cultural dynamic field, helping people across and companies across different regions to bridge the borders together?

Clarisse: 35:00

That's a good question. I'm quite realistic, you know. Yes, of course I've helped companies and people, but I don't think I don't think that's really the key element. I think it's it's the relationship you build with the people you work with. You know you can give of yourself and what you receive from the other party in that exchange, be it the client or be it co-counselor.

Clarisse: 35:29

I work a lot with Chinese lawyers and this exchange is really enriching from a personal perspective. And when you work together through same goal, then you see that you're made of the same thing and, of course, you have different backgrounds and you have different tools, and to see how you can complement each other towards a joint goal. I think that's something really rewarding. And also what you learn. I mean in every case. I mean we are paid to learn. I learned a lot about you know pharma, pharmaceutical ingredients. The next time I learn about windmills and the next time I I learn about motorcycle engines and I discover every time a new world and I think that's also something extremely rewarding that we are, we get paid to learn. I love it.

Clarisse: 36:24

I love the river also, we learn a lot about people, about culture, about industries, about everything.

Daphne: 36:31

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I love the way you put about it. And also, despite your wealth of experiences, you are still so open to learning and absorbing new information, new technology as sparing partners. Thank you so much, clarice, for joining us in today's episode. Really love what you have shared. Your wealth of experiences across different borders definitely would have enlightened our audience, so thank you so much for joining us.

Clarisse: 36:55

Thank me. Thank you for having me, daphne. I also very much enjoy your podcast and I think these kinds of initiatives are very, very useful to bridge the gap. And, if you look at today's world, what we really need is bridging the cultural gap between countries and nations and look at what we have in common and not look at what we have in terms of differences. So thank you for contributing to bridging this gap, thank you.

Daphne: 37:23

Thank you so much. Thank you for listening to Business Beyond Borders. If you have any feedback or thoughts, do write into us at support at blueancom. Click to follow to tune into the next episode. See you again soon.