The Budapest Business Journal spoke with her, Dóra Petrányi, CEE managing director, and global co-head of the TMC sector group, and the firm’s managing partner, Erika Papp, about key trends for the field, the economic and geopolitical backgrounds and gender balance.
“My practice stands on three pillars, which are pretty much interconnecting. These are life sciences, public procurement and general commercial. My priority is to continue leveraging these, because there are a lot of synergies,” Kovács (the coordinator of the firm’s CEE Public Procurement Practice) tells the BBJ.
It doesn’t take an economic genius to recognize that the market has been going through a period of near-constant turmoil ever since the pandemic, with supply chain shocks, war in Europe, an energy crisis and inflation all following one another. The latest Hungarian GDP growth figures for Q1 2025 disappointed on the downside. Yet Kovács says the life sciences sector is in a better shape than many others.
“You will always need life sciences products, even in crisis times. I think life science is an evergreen and crisis-proof sector,” she explains. “The biggest trend in life sciences now is digitalization; the shift to digital health is remarkable. CMS has a very strong technology team with a lot of experience in cybersecurity and AI, and now we are putting these together and can share this approach with our clients.”
Even so, client budgets are “really tight,” Kovács notes. Another “quite innovative solution” is showing promise, however: managed legal services work. In-house counsels outsource day-to-day legal activities on an internation level to the likes of CMS as a “one-stop shop” so they can concentrate on what really matters within their firm.
Kovács also has a role dealing with social responsibility and taking what she calls the firm’s “social footprint” seriously.
“We have a lot of meaningful projects, and we just like to give support in a meaningful way. I think it is essential that lawyers do not just dedicate their time fully to billing. None of us should be only about work. We have great, long-standing charity partners, for instance, Világszép Foundation, supporting children living in state care, for whom we do charity and pro bono work.”
Dóra Petrányi, CEE managing director, global co-head of the TMC sector group, says the appointment of Kovács reflects a trend within CMS.
“Last year, we had two other junior partners who were made partners in the commercial team, on the tech and technology and the IP and managed legal services side. Four years ago, we had a new competition partner. We think that the need for specialization in commercial legal support is really increasing thanks to the regulatory complexity,” the partner says. “So, this is part of a thorough, thoughtful strategy for growth in the Budapest office and regionally,” she adds.
Within the life sciences group, alongside talented lawyers, Petrányi says success is partly down to the relatively small size of the Hungarian market and the large size of the law firm.
“If you are operating in the life sciences sector in a small country, many of your clients won’t have in-house counsel, but it will be covered by a regional general counsel with divided attention,” she notes.
“What we have been trying to do, and I believe that’s why we are so successful, is to have a regional approach to quite a few of our pharma clients. That way, we have coverage within the national CMS team, but we also know about the pain points from other parts of the world that might be relevant regarding Hungary,” Petrányi says. The ability to call on specialists within the firm is another advantage.
“If you’re a pharma company, you need public procurement advice. If you’re applying for tenders, you need antitrust advice, because you could enter into cartels. You need some whistleblowing-related advice because you’re dealing with the public sector. Then you need data protection because life sciences healthcare data is sensitive,” she ticks off the fields of expertise CMS Hungary can address.
“The fact that we have a very strong technology group is also proving increasingly important because of how the life sciences sector is shifting towards innovative ways of resolving issues,” Petrányi notes. “Whether it’s second opinions online, online surgeries, software which is considered a medical device, or whether it is AI-driven, or R&D: there is a lot that we can combine with that team. And I didn’t even mention IP or M&A. That’s how we function; we think about it not as a regulated practice but as a sector we support.”
One remarkable aspect of our conversation is that all three partners are women. Is it unusual to have so many females in leadership positions?
“In CMS’s Budapest office, our gender balance is 50-50. I think that’s also true at the partner level, though I haven’t counted exactly,” admits managing partner Erika Papp. “When Gabriella Ormai founded this firm in 1989, I remember that there were almost exclusively ladies at CMS Budapest. And then there was a time when there were more gentlemen at the partner level and fewer ladies. And now we are 50-50.”
Is CMS an outlier in this regard? “I wouldn’t say that we stand out. Generally, women dominate the legal profession up to a certain level. You see a lot of female judges, female lawyers, female in-house lawyers, and that’s the pool we select from when we are hiring.” But Papp is quick to point out that CMS is not going out of its way to search for female colleagues, whether hiring graduates or looking to promote internally.
“From my point of view, it is irrelevant; whoever is the best candidate is the only decisive factor. If somebody is talented, willing, and ambitious, then we don’t look at the gender; we will promote the person,” she insists. Having said that, Papp acknowledges that women face a career progression issue that simply isn’t there for men.
“You have to appreciate that women have a little harder path towards partnership because, at some point in the middle of our career, we are thinking about establishing a family and having children. From then on, we have two duties: one in the office and one at home. So it is a bit harder, but it’s not undoable,” says Papp, a living example, being a wife, mother, and managing partner. That isn’t to say she has forgotten the journey she made.
“We are trying to help if we see that somebody needs a little support, for example, giving them more time to work from home if they have small children. The firm has a lot of programs that support women in meeting their family life obligations,” she explains.
Picking whoever is best for the job would seem to be at the core of much of the anti-woke criticism of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion emanating from the United States, where several prominent firms are abandoning previous DEI policies. Does Papp see any likelihood of that spreading to Europe?
“I don’t see anything like this in our London office, or any firm in the London market. But I can see it could create a problem for us, because we work with many U.S. law firms. If there is a policy that requires that law firm not to have DEI policies, there may also be a requirement that its subcontractors adopt the same principles,” Papp notes.
“That would be a problem for us, because we have our set policies and support what are important principles for us. We haven’t met the problem yet, but I’m anticipating that at some point, when a big project comes up and we have to work with a U.S. law firm, we will. I’m really curious about what will happen then,” Papp says.
This article was first published in the Budapest Business Journal print issue of May 30, 2025.
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