Wolf Theiss welcomes new partner in data protection law

Bryan Jardine, Managing Partner of Wolf Theiss Bucharest expressed his enthusiasm: "We are very excited to have Maria Maxim join Wolf Theiss and to lead our data protection practice in Romania, an area which is becoming increasingly important for companies in all industries, especially in the context of entry into force of GDPR (the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation). The addition of Maria underscores the firm’s goal to develop a preeminent regional data protection law practice. We have the necessary capacity and expertise in order to assist major data protection and compliance projects for our clients in a wide range of industries."

During her legal career of nearly 20 years, Maria Maxim has implemented numerous high-level data protection and compliance programs for major companies and has conducted a number of training programmes in her areas of expertise.

She has extensive knowledge of the telecom industry, with 18 years of experience working as in-house legal counsel at Telekom SA (former Romtelecom SA), where she started her career in 1990. From 1998, Maria was legal counsel at the Bucharest branch and between 1999 and 2009 she held different positions as coordinator of the Litigation Division and Labour Affairs of Telekom SA. Afterwards, she was appointed President of the Disciplinary Committee there.

Between 2009 and 2016 Maria served as the Chief Compliance Officer and Data Privacy Officer Romania/Anti-Money Laundering for Telekom Romania and also for the other related Romanian subsidiaries of Deutsche Telekom.

Her impressive experience also includes the position of Senior Manager, FIDS at Ernst & Young Romania, where she conducted investigations in several areas, implemented compliance programs, risk assessment procedures and data privacy programs (EU GDPR).

Maria Maxim has a graduate degree from the Faculty of Law of the University of Bucharest and a Master’s degree in business law from Titu Maiorescu University, Bucharest. She recently graduated the EMBA at Maastricht School of Management, and is currently enrolled in the Ph.D. programme in civil law at the University of Bucharest.

"I am very pleased to join a leading regional law firm such as Wolf Theiss and to be part of an exceptional team of professionals with a reputation for providing quality legal services in Central and Southeast Europe. I am keen to further develop the Wolf Theiss data protection and compliance practice, relying on my professional experience to ensure, together with my Romanian and regional colleagues, that we become one of the preferred choices for legal services in this field and in related sectors", said Maria Maxim.

The TMT and Data Protection practice of Wolf Theiss Bucharest is ranked highly in directories such as Legal 500. Among the disclosable and noteworthy clients of the local office are major companies such as Oracle, Capgemini AB, Eurocloud, GEA Group, 3M, GE, and QuintilesIMS.