Rödl and GRATA continue to work in Russia
Rödl Partners and GRATA International have offices in Ukraine but continue to work in Russia. And this desire to publicly appear as if nothing had happened is very reminiscent of the story of Oscar Wilde.
This week, Kommersant’s rating of law firms was released in Russia, and I read it instead of you for some reason. There are two pieces of news. The first news: there is not a single top international firm left in the rating. The bad news: there are two companies in the rating that you have heard about and which still continue to work in Ukraine as well.
Who is in the ranking from the former international firms?
After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, international law firms left Russia. It is impossible to check who came out only formally and who loudly slammed the door because who knows what is written about exclusive rights or something similar in their contracts. If we learn something, we will tell you. But you can also write to us if you know something.
For now, I just looked at which of the former international firms continue to apply for this rating:
- Melling, Voitishkin (formerly Baker McKenzie),
- Stonebridge (formerly Freshfields),
- Seamless (formerly CMS)
- Alumni (formerly Bryane Cave)
- Birch Legal (formerly Eversheds)
- Denuo (formerly DLA Piper)
- Balayan (part of the Hogan Lovels team)
- Nextons (formerly Dentons, lol)
- Level Legal Services (another part of the Hogan Lovels team)
- Kucher, Kuleshov, Maksymenko (ex Debevoise & Plimpton).
- Orion (teams of Linklaters and Cleary Gottlieb and lawyers of other international companies).
Rödl & Partners
Rödl & Partners is a German firm founded in 1977 in Nuremberg. According to Law.com, 500+ people are rowing at it; turnover for 2022 is about $350 million.
Kommersant put Rödl in several nominations, which I see no point in mentioning. But what is interesting to remember is that on their website, there is a section called “Ukraine,” in which it is indicated that they have two offices: in Kharkiv and in Kyiv.
I tried to find some public position of the firm on the war but only found a short news item as of April 2022 that the Polish office is helping the employees of the Ukrainian office.
The firm has not yet responded to a request (I wrote to Mr. Klaus Kessler and Dr. Peter Bömelburg) for comment. As soon as there is a comment, I will add it here.
Not only do they want to sit in two markets with the same butt. From January 1, for some reason (interesting what), Dentons promises to finish the process of separating the Russian practice from the global network. The Russian galley will be called Nextons and will remain the preferred law firm in Russia for Dentons.
It seems Dentons never caught up to what was going on. Or caught up, and simply does not plan to continue working in Ukraine.
GRATA International
GRATA is a company originally from Kazakhstan. Sometime in 2015–2016, it became a partner in Ukraine with Volkov and partners. In 2019, the partnership with the OMP company was officially announced. Mykola Orlov, managing partner of OMP, said that they broke up with Grata even before the war.
The section about Ukraine on Grata’s website now looks like this:
On LinkedIn, both of them indicate that they are partners of Grata and at the same time Anstrum Law Firm (founded in 2018). Before that, Mr. Aleksiuk worked for more than six years at Ilyashev and Partners. Mr. Savva worked at AEQUO for almost two years and, before that, for more than five years at GoLaw. Linkedin also has a third Anstrum partner — Artem Narodenko. If LinkedIn is to be believed, by 2018 he had worked for PwC Legal for seven years.
Mykola Aleksiyuk answered to my request:
All firms of the network are completely independent in all senses (legal, managerial, financial, etc.), and, accordingly, the “office” in russia has the opportunity not to leave the network and, obviously, is in no hurry to do so. For our part, we worked and are working to ensure that the network gets rid of such a member as soon as possible.
Every Anstrum employee is categorically against the network having such members. The same applies to representatives of belarus. The corresponding position has been repeatedly and unequivocally proven to all other members of the network. It should probably not be mentioned, but for the avoidance of doubt: our office under no circumstances communicates, does not cooperate, and will not cooperate in any way with clients, “colleagues” or anyone else from russia or the republic of belarus.
There are no representatives of russia/rb or people who have anything to do with them among our clients.
Regarding the idea of making a statement about Russia’s war against Ukraine, Alexiyuk said that “at the moment, we can make a “statement” only from us, Anstrum, as a Ukrainian company/member of the network. I repeat we are making every effort to ensure that relevant statements and decisions appear as soon as possible from the GRATA network as a whole.”
Who is not in the rating
I think you, like me, do not expect much from Russian lawyers. But I noticed that the rating does not include Better Chance (these are teams of several law firms based on Clifford Chance), Nikolskaya consulting (formely Herbert Smith Freehills), LGS (formely Baker Botts).
I also didn’t find one name in the rankings that had previously been in several bands, and I asked the managing partner of that firm what happened. As I predicted, he answered: “we do not participate in this shit.” I was wondering if his comment meant that after the invasion, you shouldn’t be ranked with those who didn’t condemn the war or something. Therefore, I asked for a more detailed explanation:
1. The rating will be forgotten in a couple of days after the release. As a guide, this rating does not work, as it does not have a separate site. So, just a list of companies on the fence. (It’s true, the rating can be downloaded from pdf and it’s not handy — editor’s note)
2. The rating is biased, that is, dubious. At the same time, some former international law firms are actively involved there. Previously, they snobbishly turned up their noses at Kommersant’s rating, but now it doesn’t matter. At the same time, some exes still do not enter into this shit. The fact that the rating is shit is well known. With their presence, the polished exes’ teams legalize this rating, where along with them, there are also many solvers.
In a number of cases, the ex-international law firms' teams turned out to be typical collective farms that are not afraid of any work, including toxic ones and from dreary clients. Therefore, burn this rating along with everyone.
4. And most importantly. All this is dancing on bones. Not very appropriate. Vanity conquers any inappropriateness. Even if the rating was decent, but what for?
It turns out that the legal universe is balanced no worse than acid-alkaline: in Ukraine and in Europe, there are still a few lawyers who tolerate work in Russia by their behavior; they are balanced by several Russian lawyers who find the strength not to lose their humanity.
✍️ Dima Gadomsky
