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Napa attorney a man of the world
Copyright 2001 Christina M. Guerrero, The Napa Valley Register
When doing business with someone or negotiating a business contract, Napa attorney Kevin P. Block says, "It's about building a relationship with each other, not outsmarting the other guy."
Block has learned about the importance of effective business relationships during his 16-year career as an international and local business attorney.
He "got the Russian bug" in high school, where he learned the Russian language.
He graduated and went to Oberlin College, where he majored in Russian language and literature and was an exchange student at Leningrad State University and Pushkin Institute.
After getting his master's in international affairs at Columbia University, Block began his career, working in Washington, D.C. and San Francisco before moving to Russia, where his adventures began.
"I once sat across the table from a Russian mogul," Block said. "I was representing some clients who wanted to buy some shares in his company. He sat there and proceeded to clean his pistol right in front of me."
On another occasion, Block said a member of the Mafia, "A big beefy guy," threatened him. Block was representing some clients who were having problems with a company whose assets had been stripped by the beefy guy. Block was told to "straighten out."
"Human life was cheap," Block says of the attitudes of the more colorful people he came across.
"I had a driver, as some business people do in Russia, and he turned up dead one day."
Block found the political and economic systems to be obstacles when doing business. Communism in the early 1990s forced him, and other lawyers and businesses, to go to Moscow in order to negotiate business deals. There were many steps between the beginning of a business negotiation, and the end, such as going to the ministry of shoe stores in Moscow before opening a shoe store in another part of the country, which, at 17,075,400 square kilometers, has one of the largest land areas in the world.
"Russia has taught me a lot," Block said. "It's made me a better lawyer. In business, relationships are everything. The role of the lawyer is to strengthen the relationship and give it a bit of framework."
Block says that a business contract is a "road map that you go back to periodically and remember what you've agreed to do."
In a paper he wrote entitled "Going Global: The Law of International Trade and Investment," Block gives business advice that could apply to small-town American Business negotiations:
"... Important as these considerations are, they are nowhere as important as your relationship with your foreign partner. Success or failure will surely depend more on the wording of a written agreement ... To successfully go global, you must invest not only money, but the time needed to build mutual confidence."
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