Interview with Raphael Cica

Partner, Kendris

November 1, 2021
Camille Auberson

Hello Mr. Cica! Can you briefly say a few words about Kendris and your role?

With pleasure. I am a trained lawyer and specialized in business law. I have more than 15 years of legal experience, including 5 years as an attorney in one of the leading law firms in Switzerland.

Today, I lead the legal team of Kendris and am also the General Counsel of the company. I focus on providing legal advice to Swiss and international private and corporate clients in the areas of succession planning and inheritance advice, charitable foundations and real estate transactions. Kendris employs approximately 180 people in Switzerland and abroad. In short, Kendris offers its clients family office, trust and fiduciary services, tax and legal advice as well as accounting services.

What made you choose a solution like Approovd?

As a consulting and fiduciary company, we are constantly looking for solutions that enable us to provide our services efficiently. In every case, the decisive factor for our clients is the quality of our services. Especially when you consider that a large number of our clients make important decisions based on our advice, often across generations, beyond the end of their lives, such as succession and estate planning. With Approovd, we significantly reduce the time and effort required to prepare legal documents, especially for our corporate clients, without compromising on quality.

Did you have any concerns? If so, what were they?

Although technological innovations generally bring many advantages, they can sometimes also lead to uncertainty, especially for lawyers! We work under great time pressure and it is a natural reflex to fall back on known systems and documents from previous mandates. However, I would like to add that the Approovd application is very intuitive and easy to use. The onboarding time for my team and me was very short. At the end of the day, it is mainly a matter of personality and company culture to integrate new technologies into the workflows. If the company encourages innovation and supports the adoption of new digital tools by its employees, it can better anticipate and benefit from technological waves, which is clearly the case at Kendris.

Approovd is for me the best companion of us legal professionals. It makes it faster, more accurate and, above all, allows us to focus on what makes the profession so interesting: the advice and the relationship with the clients."

Raphael Cica, Partner KENDRIS (Quelle: KENDRIS)

How were you able to eliminate them?

The best way to overcome blockades with new technologies is to try them out! Besides, as I mentioned before, using Approovd is very intuitive, my team members and I quickly found our way around.

How do you use Approovd in your work?

I use Approovd mainly in my consulting work for corporate clients based in Switzerland. Whenever a mandate requires the preparation of legal documents, such as the sale of shares in companies, I use Approovd’s intelligent templates. The result is amazing: I answer a few questions and within minutes I have a first draft of excellent quality. Also, as General Counsel, I am daily confronted with legal issues concerning our company Kendris and use Approovd in the same way when my team’s work requires the drafting of internal corporate documents, e.g. contracts and regulations within our group of companies.

What has changed for you in your work since you started using Approovd?

For me personally, using Approovd saves time and increases efficiency. It is very satisfying to be able to deliver excellent quality in such a short time.This can be compared to the traditional methods used by lawyers, the vast majority of whom still customize static contract templates on Word. As the leader of a legal team, this “old” method is unsatisfactory in several ways. The risk of error increases as all changes are made manually. Since inattention cannot be excluded (important contract clauses are missing from the template), the client may receive a document with errors.

Since we work in a legal environment that changes constantly, we have to continuously adapt our templates ourselves, with the risk that other employees use an outdated version. Approovd significantly reduces these risks: the templates are always up to date and adapted according to a guided and consistent process, so my team always produces consistent and error-free documents.

If you could describe Approovd in one word, what would it be?

You have to be very naive to expect a lawyer to sum it all up in one word! Joking aside, I would say that Approovd is for me the best companion of us legal professionals. It makes it faster, more accurate, and most importantly, allows us to focus on what makes the profession so interesting: the advice and the relationship with the clients.

What is the #1 thing you would mention to a colleague if you were trying to convince them to try Approovd?

Approovd is a platform that combines technology with proven legal expertise. The result is a completely new way of creating, editing and even signing legal documents.

Both my clients and my colleagues know me as a very thorough person who always has an eye for detail and quality. So if someone like me has implemented Approovd and is convinced by it, I advise my colleagues to try it too.

About KENDRIS

KENDRIS is Swiss partner for family office, trust and fiduciary services, Swiss and international tax and legal advice, accounting, outsourcing, aviation advisory and art management.

More about Kendris: https://www.kendris.com/en

About Approovd

Approovd AG is the Swiss streaming platform for legal documents. Founded in 2018 by Maja Zulauf, CEO, and Camille Auberson, Chief Legal Officer, Approovd’s disruptive technology offers an innovative alternative to existing processes: smart templates for legally compliant documents in record time.

Interview with Raphael Cica

Partner, Kendris

About KENDRIS

About Approovd

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