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Pál Jalsovszky, founder of Jalsovszky Law Firm — Hungary’s fastest-growing commercial law firm — shares how he built a top-tier legal practice by challenging tradition and creating a firm that reflects his values of professionalism, creativity, and clarity.

We explore Pál’s journey from international firms to founding his own, and how his Straightforward Legal Advice Framework—being Practical, Specific, and Risk-Weighted—reshaped the client–lawyer relationship. Instead of theoretical opinions, Pál believes lawyers must take responsibility, quantify risk, and give actionable answers that empower clients to decide with confidence. He also discusses building a culture of collaboration, training lawyers to think like business partners, and how AI will transform the legal profession—from due diligence and analysis to redefining what young lawyers should focus on next.

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Give Helpful Legal Advice with Pál Jalsovszky

Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast, and my guest today is Pal Jalsovszky, the owner of the Jálsovszky Law Firm in Budapest, Hungary, which is the fastest growing commercial law firm there, with a special focus on tax and the mergers and acquisition law. Pal, welcome to the show.

Thank you. Nice to speak to you. 

Yes. We go way back with Polly, 20 years probably. We were one of your first clients when you started the law firm in 2005 and we’ve worked together on many ideas and I, we met recently and I thought that would be a great guest on our podcast, sharing your journey of how you built up this very successful market leading law firm in Budapest. But before we go there, I like to ask my favorite question, what is your personal why and how are you manifesting it in your practice upon it? 

Well, to tell you honestly, I didn’t have a personal why for quite a long time because if we just go back to my history, I worked for international law firms and 10 years ago I made the decision to separate from the international law firms and start up my own venture. It was an incidental decision at that time, and it was not a well thought and well elaborated, decision and step. I can tell you the story. The story is quite short that  I worked for Linklaters and I was working for the legal industry for seven years and eight years, mainly in the tax department, and I still believe that I need some more improvement in tax, so I wanted to go to an international advisor firm. And then I started my interviews and one of them was very positive to me. And we finalized the deal or this early we said that, okay, I would start working with them. So I was just leaving Linklaters, and, I believe that I would join that firm but there was a turning point when that firm started with the new head of a department who didn’t want to increase the number of employees. And then from one day to another, they said that they are not able to offer me a job. It was actually 20 years ago. And then, from one day to another, I quit a law firm and I didn’t have a new job. So it was just a decision what to do with myself. I start my own career. So it was not a very, well thought and well elaborated decision to start my career. So I didn’t have ‘why’ at that time. So I was just going with the flow. I was giving advice, I was trying to attract clients, and it came up that I’m valuable and I was needed by the client. So I just had one more client and one more employee, one more colleague. So I broadened my spectrum. I broadened my expertise. So when I started my law firm, I didn’t have any such type of a goal or specific vision. But since then, so I’ve been doing this firm for 20 years now. So in the meantime, such type of wise and such type of impact or answers have in fact elaborated in my life and in my way of thinking. And now just starting, so preparing for this discussion, I just put together all the things that I have in the back of my mind that really just may be the idea or the drive  to come to this point. And one was actually to be the law firm that on one hand is professional, but which is also out of box, which is actually reflect my own personality, which is on one hand, services clients in the highest professional manner. On the other hand,  a law firm that is creative, that is exceptional, that is unique, that is actually the corporate myself. So how I behave, how I work, how I think, how I manage my own personal life, which is not definitely the mainstream, which is a bit unique, a bit out of the box way of thinking. So one hand to create a law firm on my image.

Yeah. 

The other is to build a community, because a law firm is a bunch of people and the most important asset of a law firm are the people. And, it was so lovely to see that I started to hire people under my own methodology. I wouldn’t say that I have a very good sense of creating personal relationships and in my private life I had some problems with that, but it turned out to be that I had quite a good sense of feeling to select those people around me who fit together each other and who can work in a combined manner and who can cooperate efficiently and who can create a society, can create  a common workshop. And creating a set of people, just the community became a very important part of my goal and my achievement. And then third came the market impact so that it’s not only an impact that I can create for 20-30, and now we are 60 people, but we can create something for the society, for the community, for the country, for professional community so that to create something which can also add something in a bigger manner. Either university students, we started our academy three years ago, which targets university students, providing them with practical knowledge and practical expertise, and also with the legal community. And also making a footprint, making a type of a brand, an image on how to run a law firm in the modern time, in the 21st century and how to a bit, adopt a new manner in old fashioned and very traditional industry. 

Yeah, yeah. No, I love it. And, when we first met, it was actually an interesting story because the building where we met turned out to be located on a plot of land, which was owned by my great-grandfather. So that was kind of a very interesting realization. But what really struck me when we first met was that you were a really good listener and you were very thoughtful how you gave advice and you had some really good out of the box ideas at the time. It was the tech structuring for an M and A transaction. And I was very impressed with your creativity there. And then we started working together on different projects and I remember you were hiring some people who were kind of picking things up and tell, and really following the style that you introduced. So what I’d like you talk more about at this point is your process. So, how is your approach different and what is it that you do differently? And you talk about being, providing straightforward legal advice. Maybe you can call it the straightforward legal advice framework. So what does that framework look like and what are the elements. 

So if you speak to lawyers in many countries and also for Hungary, lawyers tend to avoid giving you a straight answer. So in most of the cases, you receive an ambiguous answer from a lawyer telling to you that if you see from this angle you can get to this result. Come and other angle you can get to another result. And then nothing is black and white. Everything is great. And, I don’t believe that it helps the client in any way. I’m sure that you need to give a comprehensive answer to the client, so not just saying yes or no, but I believe that when you give advice, the advice is that what the client should do. So you need to assume the responsibility of providing clear guidance to the clients that in a certain situation where he should go. And, in doing so, it’s not only your gut feeling or your internal belief that you’ll need to take into account, but also the perception of the client because a certain advice is valid for one client, but it’s not valid for another client. I believe that there’s an art in that when you understand the problem of the client, you have the legal reasoning behind, you come to an understanding of what are the risks what are the circumstances, what are the legal aspect of a certain case, and then you dare to go to the client. Tell him that in your situation, I would do this, or I advise you to this, or I would advise you to do that. And, this is very rarely done in the legal profession. And most of the lawyers, they believe that this is an excessive responsibility. That if you say something to the client, then you assume bigger responsibility. If you just described the social situation and leave it to the client what to do, I don’t believe this is the case, especially if you tell the client that he or she should go probably to this direction, but okay, it has this type of, or this amount of risk, you do not just propose the client to take one road or one direction, but also tell him that, if he just opts for this decision that, what consequences it can have. Whether those consequences, they