Your first message always arrives in Geneva. But when a case needs someone physically in the room — at a border, in front of a prosecutor, at a bank's legal counter — the closest door opens in Berlin, Paris, Warsaw, Milan, or one of the other cities where we've personally vetted every partner we work with.
This is not a referral directory. It is a small, trusted consortium of lawyers who answer our calls at night, and whose names we are willing to stake our own clients on.
Most matters never need physical presence. For the ones that do — an airport interrogation, a bank meeting, a prosecutor's office — here is exactly what happens from the moment a door needs to open.
Your encrypted message arrives at Valken HQ in Geneva — always. Read personally by a senior lawyer within the hour.
For ~80% of cases, remote work from Geneva is enough. The network only activates when physical presence is genuinely required.
We call the partner we know personally — the one closest to the situation. Not a cold referral. A trusted colleague.
Strategy, communication and invoicing stay with us. You have one file, one lawyer-of-record, one Swiss privilege umbrella.
Out of professional discretion we don't publish individual partners' names — their clients expect the same privacy we do. What we can share: the cities, the specialism, the languages, and how long each partner has been in the consortium.
+ 5 more consortium partners · Amsterdam · Brussels · Madrid · Prague · Riga · Athens
Ask us about a specific cityMost of our private clients do not write to us in English. They write in Russian, Ukrainian, German, Turkish, French. And when they do, they are not passed to a translator, a relay, a junior associate who "gets by." They are answered by a senior lawyer who is a native or near-native speaker of that language.
This is not a diversity-page line. It is a structural consequence of how the firm is built: every lead desk in the consortium was chosen partly because of whose language is missing from Geneva. Swiss professional secrecy, incidentally, applies identically in every language. The passport in your pocket doesn't decide whether you are heard carefully.
Мы знаем, что обратиться к юристу из Швейцарии кажется чем-то для кого-то другого. Для крупных компаний, для олигархов, для "людей с другой полки". Это не так.
К нам пишут обычные люди — из Москвы, из Киева, из Минска, из Стамбула, из Риги, из Берлина. Семья, которую не пускают к счёту в европейском банке. Человек, которому кто-то сказал, что его имя "где-то всплыло". Предприниматель, которому нужно понять, безопасно ли ему лететь в Испанию на выходные.
Швейцарская адвокатская тайна защищает ваше первое сообщение ровно так же, как десятое. То, что вы напишете нам — на русском, на украинском, на белорусском — останется между нами, по силе уголовного закона Швейцарии (ст. 321 УК).
Мы отвечаем на русском — тем же старшим юристом, тем же шифрованным каналом, без переводчика. Signal, Telegram, ProtonMail — что удобнее. В течение нескольких часов, а не дней.
Ни по вашему паспорту, ни по вашему адресу мы не решаем, насколько внимательно вас слушать. Решает только одно: есть ли у вас вопрос, на который кто-то должен дать честный ответ.
Every consortium firm stays in its own jurisdiction. The file, the privilege, the invoice, the coordination — all of that stays in Geneva. Here is why Valken chose Geneva specifically, and why this structure matters for your case.
A Swiss-admitted lawyer who reveals a client's confidence commits a criminal offence, not a professional one. This privilege travels with us into every consortium call — a colleague in Warsaw or Frankfurt speaks to us under our umbrella, not theirs.
Switzerland cooperates with EU and UK institutions — but is not bound by them. For cross-border private matters, our independence from EU data-sharing mechanisms is often the structural reason your case can be handled safely from Geneva and not from inside the Union.
Our Geneva office is minutes from the Swiss institutions handling Interpol correspondence, sanctions enforcement (SECO), and international requests. Where a letter from a random EU lawyer travels weeks, ours travels days — through channels that recognise the sender.
When a Swiss-registered law firm writes to a European compliance desk, it is read differently than a generic letter — for reasons of regulatory familiarity and treaty architecture. In frozen-account and banking matters, that difference is often the whole difference.
A small senior team operating from a single office a few minutes' walk from the quai that hosts most of Switzerland's international legal community. This is where your first message lands, where your file lives, and where every other door in the network is opened.
Because their clients expect the same discretion ours do. A partner firm in, say, Frankfurt has its own private clientele whose interests are not served by being publicly listed as a referral destination for sensitive Interpol or banking cases. When you engage us, the relevant partner is named to you directly, under privilege, with full biographical detail. Until then, discretion is the same courtesy we ask them to extend to our clients.
Valken Legal AG remains your lawyer-of-record, under Swiss bar rules and Swiss professional privilege. The Warsaw partner acts as local counsel on specific procedural steps that require a member of the Polish bar. You receive one file, one invoice, one point of contact. This "lead counsel + local counsel" structure is the standard model used by Swiss firms for cross-border matters — we just apply it to private clients rather than reserving it for corporate work.
Yes, and you see the exact cost before it is incurred. For fixed-fee matters that do not require local counsel, the price is unchanged. Where a local step is needed (a court appearance, a bank meeting, an interrogation), we quote the addition in writing, obtain your approval, and it becomes part of the same transparent fee. No silent mark-up.
For purely domestic matters — absolutely. Use a local lawyer. Valken adds value specifically in cross-border situations: where the case touches Switzerland (banking, international authorities), where confidentiality benefits from the Swiss privilege regime, where coordination across two or more jurisdictions is needed, or where the local market for your issue is underdeveloped, conflicted, or politically uncomfortable. For anything that fits one national box, your local bar is the right place to start.
Three filters. First: where our actual clients come from and where their matters actually land — Berlin, London, Paris, Warsaw lead that list. Second: where a trustworthy partner genuinely exists, tested over years, not recruited from a directory. Third: jurisdictions where Swiss legal culture translates well — meaning the partner firm understands privilege, written engagement, fixed fees, and discretion the same way we do. The network grows slowly for this reason. A 15th city will be added when the 15th right lawyer is found, not before.
Write to us. For a meaningful number of countries outside the 14 listed, we have one or two trusted contacts we can reach with a phone call. For others — and we will tell you honestly which — we may not be the right firm for a case requiring deep local presence, and we will say so. "We are not the best people for this" is a complete answer, and one we give regularly.
Write to us in whatever language feels natural — in Geneva, a senior lawyer reads every message personally. If your situation needs someone closer, the consortium opens from there. One file. One Swiss privilege umbrella. Fourteen cities. Four hours, not four weeks.