Iran Profile | Andisheh Consultancy
With in-house counsel still a rarity outside of the major state-owned enterprises in Iran, GC talks to Pourmand, whose Andisheh Consultancy business provides external, in-house legal services.
I’m one of the shareholders and partners at Andisheh Consultancy, a consultancy firm giving advice to both Iranian and multinational companies that are working in Iran. I work with companies that usually don’t have an in-house legal function, so we fill the role of in-house but on an external contract, doing the day-to-day business, general legal advisory, contract review, corporate restructuring – everything that an in-house lawyer would do for them.
In Iran, it’s not common for companies to have an in-house legal function – even for the big companies. Contracts are usually handled by the procurement department, so unless they face really big issues, they do not have that intention to go to a lawyer. But, there is an exception: the state-owned companies – they all have an in-house legal function. Because of the size of them, as well as the nature of the business they are handling, they are an exception. They receive the budget from the state to do so, but they also have to deal with internal audits by the government and it is a requirement that they have a legal department to be able to respond and cooperate with this.
