I-Talents 2021 by INTEGRITES: the best general counsels in Ukraine, 50 finalists, 8 winners

On September 11, 2021, INTEGRITES completed the fourth round of I-Talents, the annual course for law students. The firm received more than 200 applications from the 2nd-6th year students of the universities in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Lviv, Odessa and other cities of Ukraine. 50 students have been selected to make it to the final.

This year the project lasted for three days. To get started, the students participated in three-panel sessions with the nine leading GCs from the Ukrainian and international companies – Nova Poshta, MHP, Acino Ukraine, Raben Ukraine, British American Tobacco Ukraine, PepsiCo Ukraine, Farmak, Fozzy Group, Ferrero Ukraine. The general counsels shared their experience and advice on how to build a career in law, be a leader, deal with failures, effectively manage time, and maintain a healthy work-life balance. In addition, during the master class "Legalese as a cargo cult," the editor of the Dead Lawyers Society Dmytro Gadomsky explained how to write meaningful and clear texts on legal topics.

The students spent the next two days preparing and participating in the intellectual battle. The finalists split into 7 teams, each of which developed and presented a commercial proposal to the first client. Mentors from INTEGRITES helped them to do that: the day before, lawyers from the Corporate and M&A, Tax and Customs, Banking and Finance practices gave introductory lectures. Alongside with that, the students learned how to maintain long-term relationships with clients from the workshop by Vyacheslav Korchev, Senior partner at INTEGRITES. The invited speaker, entrepreneur and organizer of TEDxLviv Martyn Kovalko, also spoke about the basics of pitching.

Together with mentors, the I-Talents finalists investigated the potential client's problem, found a way to solve it, and pitched the solution to the client. The jury which included representatives of INTEGRITES and the general counsels invited to participate in the project acted as the "client".

The winner of the team competition became JusGrain with 8 students in it:

- Halyna Vdovenko, Angelina Tatarikova, Iryna Truska and Yuliana Yatsyshyn from the National University "Kyiv-Mohyla Academy"

- Daryna Vasylenko from the Institute of International Relations of the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv

- Svitlana Korpachova and Iryna Matskova from Kyiv National Economic University

- Yuri Tsybulsky from the West Ukrainian National University.

The INTEGRITES expert jury has already selected winners in the individual competition. Soon, both them and the winning team will meet with the heads of the firm’s practices to go through a selection for an internship. The most active students will have the opportunity of further employment in the firm. INTEGRITES plans to welcome 10 interns this year.

Finally, all the registered participants of I-Talents got access to the online workshop about building a personal brand by Svitlana Romanova, Head of Legal at Metinvest Holding, and the finalists were awarded with an additional incentive – the opportunity to visit the Kyiv Innovative Terminal of Nova Poshta.

“It’s an honour for INTEGRITES to contribute to the professional and personal development of students. We are happy to see i-Talents gaining momentum: this year we received twice as many applications as at the start of the project. Participants of I-Talents learnt from and personally communicated with the lawyers from the list of the best general counsels in Ukraine. A lot of positive feedback from students shows that peer learning really helps to prepare for the start of the legal career and find out about the soft skills to develop”, Vyacheslav Korchev, Senior partner at INTEGRITES comments.

More about the course: https://i-talents.integrites.com/