Q&A with Peter Valert

I am an international lawyer in Prague, Czech Republic. I started with the English international law firm CMS Cameron in 1995 but left in the summer of 2006 to join DLA Piper in Prague. I previously ran two law offices in Sofia, Bulgaria one for CMS and one for DLA Piper, and now run the Prague office of DLA Piper. I became interested in this region of the world since I was born in the Czechoslovakia, having emigrated from there to the US after the Russian invasion in 1968. I also speak Czech so decided to try to make a career in the Czech Republic after law school instead of competing with over 190,000 other lawyers in California. Even during law school I began to get more involved in Czechoslovakia and in the summer of 1992, before my last year at Whittier, clerked for the late Czechoslovakian Supreme Court Justice Otakar Motejl.