Energy law

To aid your clean-energy business, we will unleash all our most powerful weapons: knowledge of the legislative environment, business practices, and technical issues in energy operations, and experience with the procedures of state authorities.

We handle the legal needs of dozens of clients—power and heat producers, green-power investors, electricity traders, and associations of all of these.

What we can help you with:

  • Preparing complete contractual documentation for energy traders, distributors, and producers.
  • Mergers and acquisitions of companies that own renewable power plants: legal due diligence for the acquired company; transactional documentation.
  • The development of renewable power plants, local distribution networks (LDNs), and direct grids.
  • Disputes over entitlement to state aid; overcompensation checks.
  • Lawsuits against the Energy Regulatory Office.
  • Energy performance contracting.
  • Urban planning surrounding the construction of new wind power plants.

Our experience:

  • We have helped to launch projects that are driving the Czech power industry forward today: the nation’s first virtual green power plant (Amper Market), its Green Building Council, and its first collective system for solar-panel recycling.
  • During the last two years, we have helped with a number of successful acquisitions of major RES projects, with a total installed power of over 50MW.
  • We protect clients against unjustified fines and unlawful actions by the state, and we have represented some of our clients before the European Court of Human Rights.
  • We help the producers of RES power and of biomass heat establish to smoothly connect to power networks.
  • We perform the corporate and contractual actions that are needed by the manufacturers of power-plant components.
  • We have helped to create the first collective system for solar-panel recycling, run by the operators of photovoltaic power plants themselves.

Corporate law

Within the complex world of trade relations, we provide both large companies and SMEs with support in all of their business transactions. Our lawyers are familiar with their clients’ needs and they always provide their care within the broader context, to help their clients make the right decisions. We have helped to launch many ambitious business plans. Our clients stay with us because they know that we can help them grow.

What we can help you with:

  • Performing all needed contractual acts and actions,
  • Founding companies,
  • Mergers, acquisitions, and financing,
  • Entering into contracts with an international element; choice of law; arbitration,
  • Proceedings related to the Czech Commercial Register,
  • Increasing and decreasing a company’s equity capital,
  • Legal due diligence,
  • Representing clients in commercial disputes,
  • Unfair competition,
  • Implementation of the GDPR.

Our experience

  • In addition to preparing various contractual documents on a daily basis, we assist our clients in numerous specialized cases—examples include negotiating contracts for the supply of wind turbine technology worth EUR 15 million, and preparing a draft contract for the supply of specialized turnkey software to a “virtual power plant.”
  • In addition to the usual services in this area—transfers of various types of real estate, building permits, rooftop solar power plant installation, and escrow services—we have also experience with contracts for the construction of passive and low-energy buildings, including their funding via Energy Performance Contracting.
  • We have extensive experience with legal due diligence audits and with acquisitions of projects for wind parks, solar plants, and similar structures.
  • We are one of the few Czech law firms that have extensive experience with setting up the implementation of the GDPR in practice. We helped over 40 entities to implement the GDPR in their business.

Public law

With one of the nation’s largest team of lawyers specialized in public law, we defend individuals, businesses, and communities against unlawful interventions by state authorities. We also help municipalities to implement the principles of good governance.

What we can help you with:

  • Zoning plans, from the perspectives of both municipalities and the property owners affected by these plans.
  • Construction law; advice on the building permit process.
  • Litigation against the state or state authorities when they have made unlawful interventions.
  • Administrative procedures, public procurement law, environmental law, tax procedures, and more.

Our experience:

  • We have taken more than 200 cases to the Supreme Administrative Court for a review of the official procedures involved in them—with an above-average success rate.
  • We are the most successful Czech law firm with respect to judicial reviews of unlawful zoning plans—we have stopped dozens of such plans.
  • Our expert commentary and advice has helped to shape the final form of the nation’s administrative procedure code, construction act, and other regulations.
  • We have won legal disputes over the right to clean air in the Ostrava, Ústecko, and Karlovarsko regions and the cities of Prague and Brno. Based on complaints we have filed, the courts have clearly stated that all of these regions had been unlawfully ignoring their obligations to implement efficient measures to protect the health of the population.
  • We have protected the interests of many of our clients who were hindered by the unlawful wind power plant regulations contained in the territorial development policies of certain regions.
  • Our team includes a former member of the UN’s Aarhus Convention Committee.

Family Law

Divorce, alimony, visitation rights, and the settlement of spouses’ joint property. These are family-law issues that we deal with almost daily. We provide legal advice here to both Czech citizens and foreigners.

Our clients here include spouses who are divorcing and want to settle their property after the divorce, as well as divorcing parents of minor children who need to resolve child-raising or child-support issues, or changes to the relevant contracts. We are your reliable partner for these situations and more.

What we can do for you:

  • Prepare prenuptial and marital (and postnuptial) agreements to govern the specification of matrimonial property and its administration
  • Represent you in proceedings to determine or deny paternity
  • Represent you in parental responsibility proceedings and/or care for a child’s assets and liabilities
  • Represent you in proceedings concerning custody or visitation rights
  • Represent you in proceedings surrounding minors’ child support, adult children, spouses, divorced spouses, unmarried mothers, and more
  • Provide all services needed during proceedings concerning the returning of a child under The Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction
  • Advise and represent you in divorce proceedings
  • Provide services that help you and your current spouse to achieve an amicable post-divorce settlement of the assets and liabilities within your property, or represent you in related court proceedings
  • Advise you on guardianship and foster-care issues
  • Help you with adoption

Examples of our experience:

  • We have aided parents whose children had been abducted by their spouse, securing the return of their children under the Hague Convention.
  • We have represented a Czech citizen who was ending their marriage to a citizen of a North African country in divorce and child custody proceedings.
  • We regularly prepare joint property settlement agreements, often for partners from different countries. Our clients here have included e.g. a Czech-Italian couple.

How we work

The aim of the Frank Bold Consortium is to combine the best practices from the business and non-profit sectors to support the vision of a free and responsible society on a variety of levels. We care about the social and business environment that we operate in. We combine business with socially beneficial goals.

We support business that is based not only on generating profit, but also on promoting public-interest activities. Our law office invests a part of its profits into the socially beneficial aims of our consortium.

We are a certified B Corporation. These corporations are the leaders of a global movement of people using business as a force for good.

We are a team of over thirty lawyers that includes top experts on a variety of areas of law—e.g. a former member of the UN Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee, a member of our nation’s Government Legislative Council, a member of a European Commission expert group, a member of the Government Anti-Corruption Council, a member of a municipal council, several university teachers, an attorney with top management experience, a board member at a major multinational corporation, and a winner of the prestigious Josef Vavroušek Award. Besides energy law, we provide legal services in the areas of science, research, and innovation and are experts in public law, corporate law, litigations, and contract law.

Our Team

Pavel Franc

Attorney; Managing Partner

Pavel has extensive litigation and negotiation experience in both private law and public law.

Jiří Nezhyba

Managing Attorney; Partner

Jiří is mainly specialized in construction and energy law—particularly in wind energy and urban planning.

Sandra Podskalská

Attorney; Partner

Sandra specializes in urban planning, development project permission and environmental law.

Pavel Černý

Attorney; Partner

Pavel primarily handles cases related to construction, constitutional, and civil law and environmental law.

Anna Francová

Managing Attorney; Partner

Anna focuses in particular on energy law, property transfers, contractual law and legal consultancy in corporate matters, in particular the operation of foundations.

Tomasz Heczko

Managing Attorney

Tomasz focuses on commercial law and dispute resolution. He has significant experience in representing clients in complex disputes in both legal and arbitration proceedings.

Lenka Hlaváčová

Managing Attorney

Lenka focuses mainly on civil litigation, construction law and urban planning. She is an expert in environmental law, especially on public participation.

Jana Kravčíková

Chief People Officer

Jana is responsible for the recruitment of new team members, development of and support for the new members, internal communication as well as nurturing corporate culture and values.

Jiří Novotný

CFO

Jiří is responsible for the management, cash flow control, financial planning and economic processes in Frank Bold Attorneys.

Contact

Need our legal services? Please contact our Managing Attorney, Martin Kornel.
He will respond within two working days.

tel. +420 724 514 095
martin.kornel@fbadvokati.cz

Conditions of providing legal services
How do we handle personal data

Prague

Náměstí Kinských 601/3
150 00 Prague
Czech Republic
info@fbadvokati.cz

Brno

Údolní 33,
602 00 Brno
Czech Republic
info@fbadvokati.cz

Ostrava

Palác Savoy, Zámecká 20, 
702 00 Ostrava
Czech Republic
info@fbadvokati.cz

Brussels

Rue d’Edimbourg
261050 Brussels
Belgium
susanna.arus@frankbold.org

Krakow

ul. Bandurskiego 22/4
31-515 Krakow
Poland
krakow@frankbold.org
frankbold.pl