Mariam Santrosyan joined “Concern Dialog” law firm in September2016 as Junior Associate. Later she was upgraded to the position of Head of Ongoing Monitoring Unit. Now she is the head of debt collection department.From 2009 to 2013 Ms. Santrosyan studied at Yerevan StateUniversity, Faculty of Law and obtained a Bachelor’s degree,From 2013 to 2015 made her Master’s program. She is a member of the Chamber of Advocates of the Republic of Armenia since 2018.
CONCERN DIALOG Law Firm was established in 1998 as a company for the provision of litigation and representation services mostly for individual clients. Starting from 2002-2003, the firm developed services for corporate clients. Although it is a formal Corporation, it is perhaps the first company in Armenia that has implemented Partnership principles (non-formal) of decision making. In addition, the firm is completely employee-owned.
At present, the firm provides services of both litigation / representation and legal advice. At the same time, we believe that specialization is crucial for providing high-level services, and therefore we limit our major practice areas - see the list of our services http://dialog.am/en/services/view/service/355As mentioned above, we continue to provide litigation / representation services in Armenian courts and during arbitration, and litigation practice is still one of the major practice areas of the Company.
Besides general business law, we specialize in the regulation (including telecommunications law) and legal issues of energetics (including tariff regulations).
Q: Ms. Santrosyan what’s your story? Please tell us about yourself. How did you get to where you are today career-wise?
A: I graduated from Yerevan StateUniversity (YSU), Department of Law. I am a practicing lawyer. I'm leading theDebt Collection Service at Delex Law firm.
I joined the Concern Dialog law firm in 2016. After completing my master’s degree at the YSU I was looking for a job and came across the announcement for a junior lawyer in the collection team of the firm. I believed it could be a good opportunity, as the firm already was one of the biggest and highly reputable law firms at that time. I applied for the position, went through a very competitive recruitment process and was happily selected to join the firm and start my successful journey with it. Shortly,I was promoted to the Head of theNegotiations Team, and in August 2019 I was promoted to the position of the head of the Debt Collection Service.
Q: Ms. Santrosyan how did the rapidly changing scene of COVID-19change the organization’s and your department’s workflow?
A: Due to COVID-19, the nature of the work of the debt collection team has undergone quite a few changes, as our work involves close daily cooperation with the debtors, as well as interactions with the courts and compulsory execution service.
The firm immediately switched to a remote work practice to ensure the health and safety of its employees, using different online communication platforms (e.g.exchange via WhatsApp, Viber, Telegram,in addition to email, as well as other electronic solutions) for meetings and negotiations. Also, further improvements in procedures were introduced, which allowed in the few cases where in person visit was a must, to manage the process within one visit, instead of several visits.Besides, thanks to the Supreme JudicialCouncil’s direction we adapted our operation to an electronic document circulation process, sending the documents to the courts electronically and following them up online.
The Fall War 2020 was and still is another challenge, as the whole nation was saving and transferring the savings to the different funds and to assist the army and volunteers. On another hand, the clients also needed to get the debt owed to them for their financial good standing and the stability of the economy. I can consider being happy that practically all the clients in some cases with our assistance have developed some special approaches to the situation (including forgiving penalties, opportunities to extend timetables, etc.),which made it possible for the team to fulfill their task.In general, I believe we managed to address the 2020 challenges and meet the expected results. Moreover, during this period we managed to gain two more major new clients, and now extensively are processing their cases, and I am sure we’ll manage to clear their backlog before the end of the year.
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