Published date: November 24, 2021
November has now passed and the fog has arrived. An aerosol of dense and cold vapor envelops a Turin still sleepy and numb from the fatigue of the week. The appointment with Emanuela and Raffaele, co-founders of the legal boutique Futura Law Firm, is in their office, on the first floor of a historic building a few steps from Piazza Solferino, the Savoy heart of the city. Both lawyers, Emanuela with a passion for sustainability, Raffaele with a passion for technology and digital, in 2021 they decided to found Futura Law Firm.
"Futura, in Latin, means 'future things' - explains Raffaele, who is also CEO of Futura. We chose this name because innovation is at the heart of our project. Innovation does not only mean technology and digital, my areas of specialization, but also social, the area that Emanuela follows. We did not choose to use our surnames - as traditionally happens in legal situations - also to give lawyers who recognize themselves in this vision the opportunity to be part of our team". A team that, also thanks to the legal form of a partnership between lawyers (STA), is made up of professionals with different backgrounds and extra-legal skills. "Our team includes a digital entrepreneur, Amedeo Perna - our Chief Innovation Officer and co-founder and a philosophy expert, Marco Cassinera, the Chief Philosophy Officer, who helps us in strategic and sustainability activities", says Emanuela.
We sip hot coffee and visit the office. The old parquet creaks, the Art Nouveau windows set in thick wooden frames transform the gray light into warm, colored beams. After many months of long-distance conversations, it's nice to spend time together. Emanuela and Raffaele were among the first to discover Boniviri and support the project. "This is an office center," he explains to me. We made this choice, which is quite innovative in the world of law firms, to give people the opportunity to freely experience the space and time of work. The important thing is to achieve the goal. The social dimension of our project, which we care a lot about, also passes through here. And then this solution pushes us to go to our clients, meet them, establish a direct relationship with them."
Futura Law Firm is one of the few benefit law firms in Italy, the only one in Piedmont, and for this reason it promotes this innovative legal form by assisting SMEs, start-ups and professional companies in the incorporation and evolution into benefit companies. A legal form, introduced in Italy in 2015, which represents an innovation in the sustainable management of companies by imposing few but concrete obligations. First of all, the integration of the objectives of common benefit in the company statute and the annual reporting of the results, not only corporate but also social, that the directors are required to present through the Impact Report. "We have also included kindness in our statute because we believe that this principle is necessary, not only in our sector, but in general. If we were all kinder, our society would be better and fairer".
We talk about the future and Raffaele, who brought the Legal Hackers movement from New York to Italy in 2016, guides me to discover a new world populated by words like blockchain, smart contracts, cryptocurrencies, artificial intelligence, NFT, metaverse. From the way he talks about it I understand that he is a very skilled navigator. Talking about the future, what will Futura Law Firm be like in a few years? "We are convinced that innovation and sustainability are closely linked, sustainability is also achieved by exploiting new technologies, probably in ten years we will no longer make distinctions and we will only talk about innovation. Our team, now also composed of Santiago Martin Caravaca, Luigi Cantisani and Selen Ekinci, will have grown, but the principles and our vision will still be the same".
Time has flown by and we have to say goodbye.
I keep thinking about future things as I leave behind the royal squares, the grand avenues and the illuminated dome of the Mole Antonelliana. Emanuela and Raffaele are right: in this uncertain and agitated time, kindness, the freedom to choose, the right time, open teams and mixed skills are the safest way we have to navigate the present and build a better future.
