Legal companies. Second annual ranking of law firms Famous law firms

Law is a big service based service. Business, finance, taxation, litigation, corporate, conflicts, patents, copyrights, antitrust, property, labor, arbitration, as well as administrative, political and social issues require legal expertise (of an advisory or enforcement nature). This article provides a brief overview of the top law firms based on recent earnings available at the time of this writing. While there are other criteria for ranking law firms (such as revenue per partner/attorney, number of lawyers, or year-over-year percentage growth), annual revenue remains the most accurate, consistent, and easy to follow:

1. Baker & McKenzie: Founded in 1949 and headquartered in Chicago, Baker & McKenzie employs 4,200 lawyers with 77 offices in 47 different countries. It recently surpassed its closest competitor DLA Piper in terms of reported revenue to land in the top slot with $2.54 billion (as of June 2014).
2. DLA Piper: One of the largest global law firms with more than 4,200 lawyers, DLA Piper emerged from the multiple mergers of several international law firms in 2005. Headquartered in London and Chicago, this firm competes neck-and-neck for the top slot with annual revenue of $2.48 billion as of 2013.
3. Latham & Watkins LLP Headquartered in Los Angeles with offices in 14 countries and more than 2,000 attorneys on board, Latham & Watkins ranks third in annual revenue, reporting $2.226 billion in 2013.
4. Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP: or simply Skadden, was founded in 1948. Headquartered in New York State, Skadden has 23 offices worldwide and employs more than 1,600 lawyers. The company's annual revenue was $2. 21 billion in 2013.
5. Clifford Chance LLP: Founded in 1987 through a merger, Clifford Chance is headquartered in London, has offices in 26 countries and has a roster of over 3,200 lawyers. During 2013-14 his income was £1. 359 billion (about 2.2 billion US dollars). According to the company's website, primary customer groups include “corporations from all commercial and industrial sectors, governments, regulators, trade bodies and non-profit organizations. "
6. Kirkland & Ellis LLP: Kirkland & Ellis LLP was founded in 1909 and prides itself on having a niche portfolio corporate clients, serving the corporate, tax, litigation, intellectual property and restructuring areas. With more than 1,600 lawyers on board, its 2013 revenues were $2.01 billion. USA.
7. Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP: Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer or simply "Freshfields" is an international law firm based in London with 28 offices and 4,859 staff in 17 countries. His income in 2013 was £1. 23 billion (approximately US$1.92 billion). While the current Freshfields were formed through the merger of British, German and German-Austrian firms in 2000, earlier Freshfields date back to 1743. It is a member of the coveted "magic circle" of British law firms. >Linklaters LLP
8. : Founded in 1838, Linklaters is another London-based global law firm. It reported revenues of £1.25 billion (about £1.98 billion) in 2013 and a total workforce of 4,600 people across 29 offices in 26 countries. Allen & Overy
9. : Headquartered in London with 46 offices in 32 countries, Allen & Overy is celebrating 84 successful years. As of April 30, 2014, her total revenues was £1.234 billion (about US$1.925 billion). Jones Day
10. : Founded in 1893 in Cleveland, Ohio, Jones Day has more than 2,400 attorneys in 41 offices in 19 countries. is a full-service law firm in all areas of legal practice, with recently reported revenues of $1.716 billion.

: Law f irms can have many practice areas, and leading global firms require both local and global experience. The law firms listed above operate successfully across multiple practice areas and effectively manage billions in revenue.

Vedomosti publishes the second annual ranking of law firms compiled by Pravo.ru. In the first study, two universal ratings were created: the 100 best Moscow and 75 regional firms; 16 industry ratings were also compiled. This year the ranking has undergone major changes.

There are fewer and fewer foreigners

The number of companies included in the ratings based on statistical indicators was reduced to 50 (250 questionnaires were checked). They are market leaders; the difference between companies from the top fifty and the rest turned out to be too great, explains Pravo.ru development director Alexander Moskovkin.

The rating principle has also changed. The researchers abandoned a universal rating based on a set of criteria, the main one of which was revenue. Law firms insisted that they cannot be assessed by revenue: size does not indicate the quality of services. In addition, global companies usually do not disclose revenue by national offices, and some global giants have found themselves below little-known Russian firms.

The researchers initially planned to rank firms by profit and revenue per lawyer and partner. But then they abandoned this idea: some law firms understand profit as revenue minus salaries and current expenses(excluding partners’ remuneration), others – account balances.

Therefore, there were simply two lists based on statistical indicators: revenue and the number of full-time lawyers. This is not a rating of the best law firms, these are ratings of firms with the highest revenue or with the largest staff of lawyers, explains Moskovkin. The data provided by the companies was checked against the databases of Rosstat, SPARK, and publications in the media.

But the list of revenues also turned out to be truncated: many companies, primarily international ones, although they took part in the rating, again refused to disclose financial information for the Russian office. Last time, such firms were included in the general list, but seriously lost in places. Now they are not included in the ranking at all, so the ranks of international firms have seriously thinned out. In 2010, there were 13 of them in the top fifty: Skadden, Arps, Slate, Maar & Flom, Baker & McKenzie, DLA Piper, Linklaters, Allen & Overy, Salans, CMS Legal, Hannes Snellman, Macleod Dixon, Chadbourne & Parke, Debevoise & Plimpton, Noerr, Sameta. This year there are only five: two newcomers to the rating, GBLP (the company is so tightly tied to the country that market participants often call it national) and Baker Botts, as well as Noerr and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Maar & Flom; appeared on the list and new giant– however, not a legal company, but an auditing company, PricewaterhouseCoopers. It highlights the legal direction, explains Moskovkin.

Another innovation is a liking rating based on a customer survey. Participants in the study could name any five law firms that, from their point of view, had the highest professional reputation in the Russian legal services market, says Moskovkin. The company that received the largest number of recommendations, Pepeliaev Group, received 100 points.

Grandees in refuseniks

Moskovkin notes that ratings by revenue and number of lawyers will not always help in choosing a consultant. More representative are the client ratings, in which law firms are ranked by area of ​​law (this year – 13). These lists assessed the quality and significance of projects. No places were awarded: firms are listed alphabetically but divided into two groups. The most successful ones are allocated to the first group. And the company, which, according to Pravo.ru analysts, has achieved the most significant success in a specific practice, comes first with the “best company” mark.

New participants in industry ratings from large international law firms were Akin Gump, Baker Botts, GBLP, Beiten Burkhardt, Gide Loyrette Nouel (if you do not count PricewaterhouseCoopers as law firms). Of the Russian players who have expanded the ratings, Moskovkin singles out FBK-pravo, Nektorov, Savelyev and Partners and Knyazev and Partners.

However, these ratings cannot be considered complete. The researchers did not include companies that did not want to participate in the survey at all, and among the refusers were the leaders of the Russian and world markets. Allen & Overy, Linklaters, Baker & McKenzie, Debevoise & Plimpton have disappeared from the ratings, Moskovkin complains.

They are given places on the list of refuseniks - law firms that could have taken far from the last places in the ranking if they had provided information, writes Pravo.ru. As a result, this list turned out to be almost the most prestigious. It contains four of the five companies that make up the legendary magic circle: Allen & Overy, Clifford Chance, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and Linklaters (the fifth, Slaughter & May, operates only in England), as well as Latham & Watkins, Herbert Smith, Baker & McKenzie , Hogan Lovells, Debevoise & Plimpton, Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, White & Case, Dewey & LeBoeuf.

“The 2010 Pravo.ru rating did not reflect the market realities legal services in Russia (many of the leading players are not there, and the position of others on the list caused sincere surprise), and we decided to refuse to participate in the survey,” said Alexander Bychkov, partner of the Moscow office of Baker & McKenzie.

And yet, it is strange that the leaders of the global and Russian market who refused to participate in the study were not included in the industry rankings, says an employee of one of the largest international law firms. “We are on the market, information about our projects is open, and researchers could analyze it themselves, because these are client ratings that should help choose a consultant,” he marvels.

However, despite the distrust of the existing Russian ratings, market participants are convinced that the country needs a national legal rating. Western studies, including the most prestigious Chambers and Legal 500, cover only international firms and the largest Russian players (see inset), says Ekaterina Gorchakova, head of business development at Allen & Overy.

Company size or profitability are not factors that clients consider when choosing an adviser, Chambers & Partners editor Catherine McGregor previously wrote. Perhaps Pravo.ru should conduct a separate study of Russian law firms, but evaluate them not only by revenue, recommends partner of Nektorov, Savelyev and Partners, Alexander Nektorov.

conclusions

The rated companies participated in projects whose cost is approaching 1.5 trillion rubles, writes Pravo.ru. The revenue of companies included in the top 50 in Moscow amounted to almost 11.1 billion rubles in 2010, while those in the regional top 50 amounted to just under 2 billion, according to the explanation for the study. This is about 40% of the revenue of large law firms, Moskovkin believes. In the SPARK database, the revenue of the “legal activities” sector for 2010 is estimated at 73.3 billion rubles, a year earlier it was 20 billion less.

Judging by the money earned in 2010, leading law firms, both Moscow and regional, have fully recovered from the crisis, writes Ilya Khoroshikh, deputy editor-in-chief of Pravo.ru for legal issues: if some practices, such as mergers and acquisitions , sank, the decline was compensated by growth in other areas.

In the arbitration process and corporate law, the number of participants who sent questionnaires remained practically unchanged since last year, continues Khoroshikh, and in commercial real estate, intellectual property, tax law and labor law, energy – grew steadily. Activity in antimonopoly law, international arbitration, and bankruptcy has especially increased—the number of participants has increased several times. Thus, we can talk about a significant increase in these practices, concludes Good.

Law firms are engaged in the organized provision of legal services on a fee basis. Our top 10 law firms in Russia will tell you about a dozen such Russian companies.

10 Vegas Lex

9 YUST

8 White & Case

7 Yakovlev and partners

6 Egorov, Puginsky, Afanasiev and partners

5 Pepelyaev Group

4 KPMG

3 Dentons

2 Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner (Russia) LLP

1 Agora

Year of foundation 1993

Offices Moscow, St. Petersburg, Philadelphia

Managing partners Dmitry Afanasyev, Ilya Nikiforov

Number of employees 102 (54*)

Revenue in 2004$19.4 million

Revenue in 2005$24 million**

“From a certain point on, we have the most successful law firms with St. Petersburg registration,” this is how a partner of one of the largest law firms spoke emphatically vaguely in an interview with Forbes. Founded in 1993 in St. Petersburg, the law office “Egorov, Puginsky, Afanasiev and Partners” has a strong reputation as a firm trusted by the state. Representing the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the company rescued Russian intelligence officers arrested in Qatar, helped the Federal Property Management Agency return fishing boats arrested abroad for debts, and the government hired this company during a dispute with the Moscow authorities over capital real estate. The image does not prevent the company from working with private clients - for example, protecting the Ilim Pulp company from hostile takeover attempts by the owners of Russian Aluminum and helping Rusal itself acquire enterprises in Africa.

Pepelyaev, Goltsbat and partners

Year of foundation 2002

Offices Moscow, Saint Petersburg

Managing partners Sergey Pepelyaev, Andrey Goltsblat

Number of employees 170 (100*)

Revenue in 2004$15.6 million

Revenue in 2005$19.5 million**

Tax specialist Sergey Pepelyaev and corporate lawyer Andrey Goltsblat started their career in the early 1990s. The law firm Pepeliaev, Goltsblat and Partners, which they created four years ago, managed to become a market leader and even gained much greater fame than its “senior” neighbors in the market, not only due to its participation in high-profile cases, but also due to its aggressiveness by the standards of legal market of information policy. “The best tax consultants in Russia” - this is the opinion of market participants about the company, which probably causes conflicting feelings among Sergei Pepelyaev and Andrei Goltsblat. It's nice to be considered the best, but the company hopes to be the first not only in this area. Over the past year and a half, the firm’s lawyers have supported mergers, acquisitions and other business concentrations in total amount about $3 billion. Sergei Pepelyaev also participated in the notorious “YUKOS case.” True, as a private lawyer.

Vegas Lex

Year of foundation 1995

Offices Moscow, Volgograd, Krasnodar, Saratov, Ulyanovsk

Managing partner Albert Yeganyan

Number of employees 73 (53*)

Revenue in 2004$5.9 million

Revenue in 2005 year$15.1 million**

According to experts, from 80% to 90% of all money on the Russian legal services market circulates in Moscow. The central directorate of the Vegas-Lex company is also located in Moscow, but the company sees its future in the regions. Now the company has three regional directorates - Volga, Southern, Nizhnevolzhskaya, and by 2007 the company will be represented in 10 regions. “Two years ago, our focus on regions in understanding the rest of the market looked inadequate. Our colleagues said: what are you doing? You have enough money, but why did you decide to spend it in the most stupid way? And now almost all of them are opening offices in the regions,” laughs the managing partner of Vegas-Lex, Albert Yeganyan. Vegas-Lex's ambitious plans are not limited to Russia. In the next six months, the company plans to open offices in Ukraine and Kazakhstan. The sharp increase in the company's revenue this year is explained by the appearance of RAO UES structures among its clients.

Alrud

Year of foundation 1991

Offices Moscow

Managing partners Vasily Rudomino (pictured on the right), Maxim Alekseev

Number of employees 53 (29*)

Revenue in 2004$4 million (e)

Revenue in 2005$5 million** (e)

Tanks are entering the city, what are you doing here?” - the notary was perplexed on August 19, 1991, certifying the signatures of Maxim Alekseev and Vasily Rudomino under constituent documents Alrud company. The young lawyers were not going to wait: they found their first clients already in line at the Registration Chamber. Alrud is not as well known to the general public as other market leaders, but enjoys authority in the professional circle. Among its clients are Pharmacy Chain 36.6 and the international rating agency Moody's Investors Service. In organizing its work, Alrud strives for balance: foreign and Russian companies occupy approximately equal shares of the firm's client portfolio.

Monastyrsky, Zyuba, Stepanov & partners

Year of foundation 1991

Offices Moscow

Managing partners Yuri Monastyrsky, Vladimir Zyuba, Alexander Stepanov

Number of employees 26 (16*)

Revenue in 2004$3 million (e)

Revenue in 2005$4 million** (e)

The & icon in the official name “Monastyrsky, Zyuba, Stepanov & Partners” hints at the desire to resemble a Western law firm. One way or another, this company has a reputation for customer service among foreign companies. She is also known as one of the most powerful arbitration specialists in the country. Partners at other large law firms like to talk at length about their efforts to become market leaders. Yuri Monastyrsky answered Forbes’ question about his company’s plans very briefly: “We will work.”

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