About Ramon
Ramon Frankfort is an attorney and MfN-registered mediator specializing in business relationships and employment matters. He has been practicing law since 1996, with a brief period in the corporate world as in-house counsel and management team member at a mid-sized internet company. Through his firm, Frankfort Legal, based in Haarlem, he has focused on corporate and insolvency law.
As an attorney, he advises entrepreneurs, shareholders, and directors on acquisitions, financing transactions, business collaborations, employment law matters, and directors’ liability. The District Court of North Holland regularly appoints him as a bankruptcy trustee and administrator in suspension-of-payment proceedings. He serves on the boards of the Dutch Association of Mediation Lawyers (NVVMA) and the Platform Business Mediation, and is a member of the Dutch Bar Association’s mediation advisory committee.
Since 2017, Ramon has also worked as a mediator. As an MfN-registered mediator, he helps stalled collaborations reach outcomes that the parties themselves support, without court proceedings, litigation, or unnecessary reputational damage. In addition to business disputes involving shareholders, directors, families, associations, and foundations, he handles employment mediations, including conflicts between employers and employees and tensions within teams and management boards. His two roles reinforce one another: his experience in structuring deals gives him insight into why collaborations sometimes fail and how they can be restored.
Ramon in his own words
A collaboration almost never starts with a conflict. It begins with trust, shared ambition, and good intentions, whether between shareholders, family members, or an employer and employee. But interests shift, expectations diverge, and one day the parties are no longer talking with each other, but about each other.
As an attorney, I have spent more than twenty-five years seeing how partnerships and collaborations are built and why they sometimes break down. I bring that experience to my work as a mediator. I understand the business and legal aspects of a dispute, but my role is different: not to advise or judge, but to help parties engage in meaningful dialogue again.
My approach is direct. I address what is really going on, even when it is uncomfortable, and help parties move from entrenched positions back to their underlying interests. Ultimately, the solution is one they create themselves, that is precisely why it lasts. No judge, no litigation, no unnecessary reputational damage. Instead, an outcome that the parties themselves support and that enables them to move forward.
Qualifications
2021
Specialized postgraduate program in restructuring (WHOA restructuring expert), Leiden University
2017
Professional training as a Legal Mediator, ADR Institute, Amsterdam • Grotius specialization program in Corporate and Business Law • INSOLAD/Grotius specialization program in Insolvency Law (cum laude)
1996
Admitted to the Bar. Law Degree, Utrecht University
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