CounselChambers was founded in 2004 by **Anastasios D. Velonakis** and **Eleftheria Kalogridou-Roussel**, two Athens-called barristers who had spent the previous decade dividing their time between large commercial firms in Kolonaki and chambers in Lincoln's Inn. They had seen, on both sides of the Channel, what worked when a serious commercial or tax dispute landed on a partner's desk: a single brief delivered to an independent advocate who could think through the problem from the pleadings up. They returned to Athens, signed a lease on the second floor of a 1930s building on Akadimias Street facing the National Library, and opened with five members and one clerk. The chambers took its name from the simple word that had begun every memorandum either of them had ever written: *counsel*.nnTw