Andrew Mac, 35
“If you think you can get by in Ukraine knowing just Russian or Ukrainian, then you’re mistaken,” said Andrew Mac, managing partner of Magisters, Ukraine’s largest law firm. So he set out to learn both languages.
Konstantin Klymenko
Born in New York City but raised in the Philadelphia area, those linguistic skills combined with his legal ones have made the Ukrainian-American one of the nation’s top-flight lawyers.
He works for a firm that employs more than 100 lawyers and with annual revenues close to $40 million.
Mac has provided support for transactions worth more than $1 billion over a two-year period.
Initially, Mac was recruited by PricewaterhouseCoopers in 2002 to work as a senior lawyer in Kyiv.
He intended to stay only for two years, but then was offered a partnership with Magisters in 2004, the same year as the democratic Orange Revolution that overturned the rigged presidential election.
“I was inspired by what I saw on the Maidan (Nezalezhnosti). This was the catalyst that made me want to stay longer in Ukraine.”
– Andrew Mac.
“I was inspired by what I saw on the Maidan (Nezalezhnosti),” Mac said. “This was the catalyst that made me want to stay longer in Ukraine.”
Holding a bachelor’s degree from Pennsylvania’s Lehigh University and a law degree from Vanderbilt, Mac said he has learned a lot about Ukraine beyond the “diaspora version” he grew up with.
Mac plans to leave Magisters’ Kyiv office in the near future to spend more time at the firm’s London office to help expand its presence there and eventually open a branch in the United States.
Mac works closely with Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. Magisters sponsors visiting professors at courses and seminars at Mohyla as well as at other Kyiv universities.
It also funds a mock courtroom team whose annual winner represents Ukraine in Washington, D.C. at a global competition. He also participates in a big brother program at a local orphanage that involves not only mentoring, but also financial assistance.
