Picking right lawyer is not always easy; rankings can help, but they are subjective and don't tell whole story.
While shopping for shampoo or groceries may be easy, finding the right lawyer or law firm is a much more difficult choice. How can a client find the best legal services at the right price?
Just as with many purchases, prestige, price and quality are factors in deciding which lawyer or law firm will best represent the legal interests of a company or person. Fortunately, established ratings agencies exist to help people decide.
Lawyers in Ukraine point to four major worldwide rankings of law firms as being fair and independent. They are: The European Legal 500, International Financial Law Review 1000, Chambers & Partners and Practical Law Company Which Lawyer? Their methods are based on questionnaires filled out by law firms themselves, peer reviews and client feedback. Although their results differ, many of the same Ukrainian law firms keep coming out on top.
Among the Ukrainian legal firms consistently in top-tier rankings are Baker & McKenzie, Magisters, Sayenko Kharenko and Asters in these major specialties: Banking, finance, corporate law, and mergers & acquisitions.
These services were the most important to law firms, at least before the onset of the global economic crisis last fall. But several more law firms doing business in Ukraine can be considered top-tier firms as well, according to the four ranks. The list includes: Vasil Kisil & Partners, Chadbourne & Parke, DLA Piper Ukraine, CMS Cameron McKenna and Salans.
Rankings mean a lot for law firms. The top-ranked law firms can expect to attract top clients, to be involved in top deals and also to charge top dollar.
“While the fees of top law firms are generally higher, clients still prefer to use them for larger transactions because they need specific expertise, speed, innovative solutions and reliability,” said lawyer Michael Kharenko.
Mikhail Ilyashev, managing partner at Ilyashev & Partners, said the importance of rankings cannot be overestimated. “Law firms mentioned by the international directories, approximately 30 law firms, hold 90 percent of the legal market” in Ukraine, he said. The rest of the players – some 1, 500 law firms – are left with a smaller part of a market, even though their legal talents may be just as good as the top-ranked lawyers.
Despite all the rankings and research, however, there are certain intangibles that no amount of research can measure.
An increasing number of international law groups have setup Ukraine-based practices in recent years, but the rankings show that homegrown Ukrainian firms have held up well. They still control a large chunk of the market and represent a large share of the country’s top-ranked firms.
Local knowledge, professional credentials and international experience are powerful selling points for law firms, some lawyers say.
“We stick to internationally accepted rules and laws because they determine the positions of the international companies working here. At the same time, we are Ukrainians and we know how to resist corruption and fight against the elements of corruption which could otherwise be used against our clients,” Oleg Makarov, managing partner for Vasil Kisil & Partners said, explaining the key to success of Ukrainian lawyers.
Borys Danevych, a partner for Paritet law firm, said that sometimes there is no substitute for knowing a place and its people well.
“Ties are also significant in Ukraine, as well as understanding the local mentality,” Danevych said.
Some lawyers believe that many international players arrived too late in Ukraine. By the time they came on the scene, they found that local firms had become strong enough and occupied their market niche. In the current economic crisis, moreover, expansion into new areas and places is not high on the agenda of many law firms.
The rankings also show that Ukrainian firms generally are better than international ones at litigation and arbitration. Chambers & Partners recommends Magisters and Vasil Kisil & Partners for dispute resolution. For expertise on intellectual property, Baker & McKenzie and local experts Doubinsky & Osharova, Pakharenko & Partners come up high.
But all research is limited by its own methodology and, therefore, subjective to varying degrees.
“The international rankings are quite fair and trustworthy in terms of their independent background and unbiased ‘no pay’ and ‘equal opportunity’ approach to the research process,” said Sergiy Oberkovych, co-founder of Gvozdiy & Oberkovych law firm. But research done remotely “often lacks in-depth knowledge and a full grasp of the Ukrainian legal market.”
Oberkovych thinks that participating law firms can influence the rankings with their “own marketing efforts and time investment to submit the requested information and in full and to provide references from ‘happy clients.’”
Another disadvantage of such research is that it can be based on outdated information and miss the dynamics of the current state of the market, which can change quickly and unpredictably.
“Following the economic implosion in late 2008, Ukraine’s corporate legal community has been forced to shift its focus almost overnight,” said Oleg Makarov of Vasil Kisil & Partners. “The market had been increasingly dominated by a wave of sophisticated financing and optimistic outbound merger & acquisition transactions. But now it has become one where lawyers have to quickly become experts on bankruptcy, restructurings and alternative dispute resolution.”
Lawyers are currently earning a big share of their revenue from debt and corporate restructuring, bankruptcies and other unhappy events. Some of these specialties were not measured in recent ratings.
And, reflecting the generally miserable state of the economy, these are not the best of times for lawyers.
Some legal experts estimate a 40 percent decrease in revenues in the last year, as well as layoffs of more than 20 percent of staff. Some lawyers have left big firms to set up their own boutique practices. Experts from Legal Marketing Solutions, founded by marketing specialists formerly with Asters, count at least three new firms launched this year by lawyers who used to work for top 10 law firms. The start-ups include EnGarde, D&D and Avellum Partners.
But the most important change that happened this year is with clients.
“At the moment, this is a client’s market. Legal budgets are tough and clients are in a position to demand much lower fees,” said Margarita Karpenko, managing partner DLA Piper’s Kyiv office. More fee arrangements are now built on caps or fixed fees, in contrast to hourly fees of the past.
According to Oleg Makarov of Vasil Kisil & Partners, the times mark “the end of law firm glamour.”
“If before the crisis external attributes such as a famous brand name meant a lot, and to get a loan from the bank a client needed to bring a legal opinion only by a particular ‘extraordinary’ law firm, now the situation is quite different,” Makarov said. “Clients became smart enough and picky enough to choose intellect, experience and result.”
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Note: Pick up a copy of this week’s Kyiv Post to see tables with rankings of Top Law firms active in Ukraine.
