UBA News (#03 March 2016)

Challenges and Realities of the Legal Market

The XII UBA Annual Legal Forum “Development of Legal Services Market in Ukraine-2016” was held in Kiev on 26 February 2016. This year the organizers of this traditional gathering introduced an innovation and offered new interactive discussion formats during the event. Moderators of the first session, Armen Khachaturyan, senior partner of Asters,together with Iryna Khymchak, BD director ofRedcliffe Partners, presented an overview of the results of the previous year and gave participants an opportunity to predict the trends and to make forecasts about the market’s development in 2016.

The situation with the exit of foreign companies and appearance of new global players was commentedupon by Bertrand Barrier, managing partner of Jantet, Evgen Kubko, senior partner of Squire Patton Boggs — Salkom and Olexiy Soshenko, managing partner at Redcliffe Partners. The results of the vote by the audience illustrated that the majority of foreign companies will stay in Ukraine and the new “players” will replace those who have left the market.

A separate discussion was devoted to competition on the country’s legal market. According to the organizers, it is necessary for law firms to pay attention to competition from the side of their colleagues who are dumping, lawyers from the “Big Four” as well as the legal departments of clients. The lively interest of the participants led to the “Big Four” commenting on the provision of legal services on the market. Andriy Pronchenko, director of PwC Legal, together with Sergiy Popov, partner of KPMG Ukraine, shared their experience and expectations with the audience.

 

Expansion of new markets

Within the framework of the first session, the moderators gave participants an opportunity to answer the question of practicability of other jurisdictions expansion and opening of new offices. Thus, the moderators mentioned ILF Integrites, which during the past year increased the number of its offices in 7 jurisdictions. Ruslan Bernatsky, managing partner of ILF Integrites, shared the firm’s experience of opening foreign offices and announced the expansion of its team. Mikhail Ilyashev, managing partner of Ilyashev & Partners, explaining the opening of their office in Moscow, stressed that they are always looking for new opportunities. “If Ukraine doesn’t provide us with such an opportunity, we have to undertake expansion in new markets”, he noted. Svitlana Lazarenko, CEO at GOLAW, noted that the development of regional markets is part of the firm’s strategy, notwithstanding the fact of requests from existing clients that is also present. The opposite tendency of exit from the region and opening of a representative office in Kiev was illustrated in their experience by Antonina Selivanova, the head of the Kiev office of Dynasty. According to the vote: 40% of participants noticed that the expansion of the office network is a strategic decision; 37% — are ready to follow their clients and 23% are not reviewing the possibility of expansion because of high risks.

 

Lawyers on State Service

The second panel discussion was devoted to the work of lawyers on state service and whether they could bring benefit to the legal market. Moderator Elena Derevyanko,managing partner at PR-Service Agency, gathered together Oleksiy Filatov, deputy head of the Presidential Administration of Ukraine, Ganna Vronska, deputy minister of Ecology and Natural Resources of Ukraine, Nataliia Mykolska, Deputy Minister of Economic Development and Trade of Ukraine — Trade Representative of Ukraine; Olena Sotnyk, Viktoriya Ptashnyk, Andriy Zhurzhiy, members of Parliament of Ukraine; Sergii Koziakov, chairman of the High Qualification Commission of Judges of Ukraine and Sergiy Shklyar, Deputy Minister of Justice of Ukraine on Enforcement Matters. Among the questions raised were “pitfalls” of work for the state and problems faced, behind the scenes in politics, involvement of experts in the process of reforms, market expectations from lawyers working for the state and prospects for a return to the legal business and to other businesses.

Traditionally, a separate session of the Forum was devoted to the questions of partnership and business processes within a law firm. Moderated by Irina Nikitina, an independent business consultant, the points of challenges faced by managing partners in a turbulent market, the necessity of strategy and business planning, effective experience management as a new marketing tool were all raised.

 

Trends and development

International tendencies and trends on the legal services market became the subject of the final session moderated by T³mur Bondaryev, managing partner at Arzinger. The experts among which were — Irina Paliashvili, president at RULG — Ukrainian Legal Group, P.A., Leonid Tolstov, partner at VARUL, Alexander Bolkvadze, partner at BLC Law Office, Alexandre Khrapoutski, partner at Sysouev Bondar Khrapoutski, commented on economic and political processes in the world, the region and the country — correlation with the development of the legal market; the most popular services today — impact on the market in general and the structure and needs of legal business in particular; personnel shortage as well as the future of the legal services market in the region.

 

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