About 200 MARQUES Council and Team members attended the Spring Team Meeting in Frankfurt last week.

During the dinner on Thursday evening, MARQUES members Claire Lehr (Edwin Coe LLP, UK) and Gabriele Engels (D Young & CO LLP, Germany) - pictured right - gave the annual Kay Uwe Jonas Memorial Lecture. Claire is Chair of the Programming Team and Gabriele is Chair of the Cyberspace Team, and both knew Kay Uwe, who died suddenly in 2012.

Claire and Gabriele paid tribute to Kay Uwe’s legacy and how his work influenced MARQUES as it is today, including through fostering young people, mentoring, and building an inclusive, collegiate community.

They added that today MARQUES is fulfilling Kay Uwe’s instincts of staying calm, acting professionally and remaining curious. “We are now the inspiration for future members,” they said.

Also during the dinner, MARQUES Chair Claudia Pappas presented the David Goldring Volunteer Award to three MARQUES members who have contributed to the association in many ways, notably by organising the German Judges Meeting every two years.

They are Till Lampel (Harmsen Utescher), Andreas Lubberger (Nordemann Czychowski & Partner Rechtsanwältinnen und Rechtsanwälte mbB) and Martin Viefhues (Jonas Rechtsanwaltsgesellschaft mbH).

Claudia described them as the “Three musketeers”. You can read a report of the 2025 German Judges Meeting in the November 2025 HouseMARQUES newsletter.

During the Spring Meeting, all the MARQUES Teams met and discussed current and future projects and representatives of each Team presented them to the whole Meeting. There was also a Council Meeting, Leadership Meeting of Team Chairs and a workshop on investigating with AI (see Class 46 report here).

The next Spring Team Meeting will be held in Barcelona, Spain in March 2027.

All photos taken by MARQUES staff