About Us

Mag. Dr. Géza Simonfay is a Hungarian attorney and since 2022 a retired Lawyer in Austria. He is a certified court translator and interpreter for German, English, French, and Hungarian registered in Austria. This allows us to prepare certified translations required by the court and authorities, even within short deadlines.
From 1990 to 2022 Dr. Simonfay was a member of the Vienna Bar Association. In 2007 he also became a member of the Hungarian Bar Association. Since 1999 Dr. Simonfay has been registered before the Hungarian Bar Association as a foreign legal advisor and since 2004 registered before the Budapest Bar Association as a European Community lawyer. Dr. Simonfay graduated from the University Vienna, Faculty of Law, and the Vienna School of International Studies. Afterwards he worked in West Africa for some years for the United Nations Development Programme. Until 1980 he was a member of the legal department of IMMUNO AG and Mobil Oil Austria. He was the director of the Legal department of Steyr-Daimler- Puch AG until 1989. Following that, he was a partner at the law firm “Goriany, Jakobljevich & Partners”. He is a founding member of EUROLAW – European Business Group since 1992 (www.eurolaw.eu). Fields of expertise: international arbitrations, company law, real estate law, investment law, international private law, civil law, criminal law. He speaks German, English, French, and Hungarian.

Arlette Zakarian is an avocat au Barreau de Strasbourg (French lawyer), a registered European lawyer in Austria and a mediator. Previously, she worked for the Bank of Scotland – Lloyds Banking Group, advising on all international insurance litigation matters for the Austrian and Swiss markets, and was a visiting lecturer in public international law at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (Geneva).
She has been an invited lecturer at the University of Applied Sciences in Vienna, Head of Programmes and Activities for the International Anti-Corruption Academy (Austria), Academic Director of the Advanced Master of International Business Law and Management (in collaboration with King’s College School of Law, University of London) at ESSEC Business School in Paris, where she was also responsible for teaching International Business Law, as Senior Lecturer in Public International Law at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po) / Paris School of International Affairs (PSIA), as Legal Advisor (Judicial Institutions) for the Arab Center for the Rule of Law and Integrity (ACRLI), as Policy Analyst at the OECD (Private Sector Development – Middle East and North Africa Programme) and as In-house Counsel in the International Legal Department of Renault SA (Alliance with Nissan). She also clerked at the Vienna High Court, interned at the United Nations Office at Vienna (International Narcotics Control Board), and worked as a research assistant to Professor Pnina Lahav at the Institute for Constitutional Law and International Perspectives at Boston University before serving as a research assistant in the office of Clinical Director Peter Rosenblum at Harvard University’s Human Rights Program.
Of Armenian origin, she was born in Iran, raised in Austria, lived in France for eleven years and in Germany for nine years. She works in French, German, English, Armenian (Western and Eastern), Farsi (Persian) and Spanish.

Education

• PhD (Dr. iur.) in Public International Law (written in French and German), University of Vienna Law School, Austria

• Master (Mag. iur.) in Public and Private Law, University of Vienna Law School and University of Salzburg Law School, Austria

• DEA (MPhil) in Public International Law, University Paris II Panthéon – Assas, France

• LLM (Master of Laws) in American Law, Boston University School of Law, Massachusetts, USA

• Executive Master in International Negotiation and Policy Making (Valedictorian), Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, Switzerland

Continuing Education

• Oxford Women’s Leadership Development Programme, 2022, University of Oxford – Saïd Business School, UK

• Ausbildung zur zertrifierten Mediatorin, 2022, University of Heidelberg – Das Heidelberger Institut Für Mediation, Germany

Last publications

• Arlette Zakarian, Die Armenier in Bergkarabach haben schon verloren, Der Standard, 28.09.2023
• Arlette Zakarian, Guter Diktator-böser Diktator, Der Standard, 07.10.2022
• Gurgen Petrossian, Sarah Babaian & Arlette Zakarian, Berg-Karabach – Eine völkerrechtliche Analyse des Konflikts um Arzach, Nomos, 2022, 448 pages

Presse

• Arlette Zakarian: Die einzige Auslandsösterreicherin auf dem Wahlzettel, Die Presse, 23.09.2024