Meaningful experiences create lifelong memories: The Nordic Secondment 2022

Close collaboration between our Nordic offices is one of the core things in our business and sharing the same vision collectively drives our success. The Nordic Secondment Week is a unique opportunity for our employees to get to know their colleagues, another office culture and local practice groups in Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark.

Secondments under the program are offered once a year in September. The secondment gives our employees the opportunity to visit another Nordic office and work with their Nordic colleagues for a week. Each office hosts three secondees from different locations.

This year’s Nordic Secondment Week took place on 19-23 September and altogether 18 employees travelled across the Nordics to gain new insights and experiences in our other office locations.

How did this year’s secondees experience the opportunity?

“Apart from making many new demands on the legal industry and our advisory services, globalisation also creates many opportunities, including the opportunity to learn about new cultures, countries and forms of collaboration, which – in my view – is very exciting. That’s why it felt so obvious to me to apply to join the Nordic Secondment programme, and being seconded to Helsinki, perhaps the most exotic Nordic capital, was just an extra bonus.” Anne-Sofie Thomassen, Assistant Attorney, Aarhus

Jan Zelmenis, Associate, Helsinki, says “It was cool to see that the other Nordic colleagues share a similar view to what we do, who we are and where we want to be as a firm. It was also equally interesting to spot the little differences in the everyday work culture, structure of the practice groups and working style. Never knew Norwegians were so good at darts or knew their way around Finnish hip-hop.”

“We already work together quite a bit with our Danish IPT colleagues on various projects and it's nice that it's so easy to get in touch with a colleague in another Nordic country and get help. I think the better we know each other, the easier it will be to communicate.” – Elisabet Borg, Associate, Stockholm

“The Nordic countries have a lot in common when it comes to culture, commercial and legal wise. Because of that we have the best opportunities for great cross-border cooperation and can learn a lot from each other. It was a nice experience to work with and get to know the Swedish teams in finance regulation and IPT.” Karoline Oppen Berntsen, Associate, Oslo

Read all the secondee experiences from our Nordic Career site here.

As an overall outcome, Nordic cooperation is widely shared and valued, as well as creating new friendships internationally is considered a unique opportunity at DLA Piper across borders.

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