Law Firms Gaining Their Identity

Over 160 executives of leading law firms and bar associations from 22 countries participated in the 3rd Annual International Law Firm Management Conference, which was held by the IBA on November 19-20, 2009 in The Ritz-Carlton Moscow hotel, enjoying unprecedented success.

Held for the third time in Moscow, this unique specialized conference brought together leaders of the professional legal community and experts in the law firm management and was organized, in cooperation with LegalStudies.RU, by the International Bar Association having the membership of over 30,000 lawyers and bar associations and law societies around the world. Vasil Kisil & Partners Law Firm was represented at the Conference by its Managing Partner Mr. Oleg Makarov and Partner Mr. Denis Lysenko.

The Conference was opened by IBA President Mr. Fernando Pelaez-Pier who has recently made a trip to Ukraine for the very first time and, in particular, paid a visit to Vasil Kisil & Partners Law Firm whose Managing Partner Mr. Oleg Makarov spoke at Session 1 on “Economic Integrity of Law Firms (Bar Associations): A Mission for National Bars?’ In its public speeches, Mr. Makarov repeatedly stressed the need to adopt a new Law of Ukraine "On the Bar” to determine the status, place, and forms of the legal profession. During the panel discussion, moderators, leaders of national bar associations and law societies, and partners of leading law firms debated on how the economic integrity of law firms (bar associations) depends on the policy of national law market regulation. The law firm leaders discussed the following issues:
 

Traditionally, over two thirds of those attending the Conference were from the countries of the former USSR who took advantage of the forum not only to debate on the issues of law firm management with other professionals, but also to form a sustainable and developed market of legal services in one of the most significant regions of the world.

Several sessions of the Conference were dedicated to the topics that have a direct impact on the law market situation and the success of law firms in the Russian-speaking countries: corruption, law competitiveness, and legal practice regulation.

The participants of the discussion strictly distinguished between two categories of lawyers currently operating in the market: professional lawyers and intermediary lawyers. In order to ensure an active demand for the services of professional lawyers, the legal system should be developed well enough, along with the administrative and judicial systems. Most of the large cross-border deals are closed under a foreign law, most frequently - English law. Thus, national legal systems, along with the national legal community as a whole, fall behind in the competition for the potential client community.

The urgency of the integration of legal professionals around a single vision of values in their practice, which is built on the balance of professional ethics and legitimate efforts towards economic stability, has become a key topic of the session attended by Mr. Fernando Pelaez-Pier, the IBA President.

The positions of market operators are also consolidated by a recently visible improvement of the quality of law firms’ management and development. This is proven by the fact that one of the Conference sessions featured the role of professional managers in law firms, in particular executive (administrative) directors. If the existence of such managers was an exception several years ago and was considered to be the interference with the sphere of competence originally attributed to the partners, a lot of law firms employ them nowadays, thereby sparing the partner’s time to focus more on dealing with clients.
The last session of the Conference was traditionally focused onlaw firm development strategies. Law firms, which earlier developed spontaneously as law practices that were traditionally unfamiliar withbusiness approach to work organization, now started resorting to business planning and strategic planning more and more frequently.
The discussion was joined by a special guest – Mr. Boris Firsov, a Partner at Roland Berger Strategy Consultants – one of the world’s largest strategy consultancies. In his opinion, whatever business it is, the first thing to be done by the company in order to shape and implement its strategy is to answer a question: “Who are we?”. Therefore, as a closing chord of the Conference, he wished the law firms to gain their identity in the market.
For more detail on the Conference, go to:  http://iba.legalstudies.ru/