Business lawyers keep their jobs during crisis

The number of lawyers working for the biggest 22 law firms in Bucharest has gone down by merely 0.5% since March, considering the data on the Bucharest Bar Association website and the Law Firms Yearbook centralised by ZF.

The top 22 firms by number of lawyers had 837 legal advisers working for them on November 1, compared with 841 in March this year.

None of the top four firms by number of lawyers registered with the Bucharest Bar Association - Nestor Nestor Diculescu Kingston Petersen, Musat & Asociatii, Tuca, Zbarcea & Asociatii and Bostina & Asociatii - saw their number of lawyers go down during this period.

The companies that let most lawyers go are Sova & Asociatii (seven people), and D&B David & Baias (five lawyers), while PeliFilip and Bulboaca & Asociatii hired five lawyers each, for a total of 26 and 24 during the same period.

"Internal restructuring was indeed operated in order to adjust the team and the cost structure to the realities of the business law service market. The departments were not cut in number, we focused on optimising their size instead," said the representatives of Sova & Asociatii, where the number of lawyers fell from 20 to 13 from March through November 2009.

As for D&B David si Baias, the five-lawyer litigation team moved to PeliFilip, a firm established by a group of lawyers that split from the Nestor Nestor Diculescu Kingston Petersen (NNDKP) last year.

"We are a firm that had the right size at the right moment and continued to develop because of the increase in customer base. We established a litigation division and an employment and restructuring department. For the litigation division we brought onboard five people from David si Baias as of August 1, and hired four people for the employment department," said Francisc Peli, partner of PeliFilip law firm.

He says that as far as his company is concerned, the number of lawyers has almost doubled, from 18 last November to about 33-34, taking into account the newest employees and the young lawyers part of the firm who have yet to finalise all the necessary formalities to show up on the website of the Bucharest Bar Association.