Gheorghe Musat: '89 caught me with 17 RON in my pocket

Businesspeople owe a lot to lawyers. Almost all major deals have been assisted by a bunch of Romanian lawyers, says Gheorghe Musat, one of the most respected business lawyers.

According to his calculations, around 60% of the partners of the top ten law firms on the Romanian market have worked with Musat & Asociatii firm he runs.

Some of the lawyers chose to follow their own path, which has not affected the performance of the firm that much, which has remained a top player on the business law market in the past 20 years.

But the first years were not necessarily easy ones. "My start was much tougher than that of any other lawyer. '89 caught me with 17 RON in my pocket and a few friends at whose places I could go and have dinner. In early January I was accepted again in the bar with plaudits (...) Zamfirescu was already renowned, Nestor came from a well-known institute, Florea, Stoica already had a name. I was coming back at the bar after four years of jail in Aiud, as a political convict, and another two years as a taxi-driver in Gara de Nord," Musat recalls.

"I became aware law careers would follow different coordinates and I was waiting for the dawn of capitalism. Thus, at the end of 1990 I already had private clients (...) It was the time of the first foreign investors," says the lawyer who has meanwhile come to run a firm with over 70 lawyers and revenues worth above 15m euros in 2008.

The firm's business started in a rented studio in Piata Victoriei and then Musat bought a 4-room apartment and afterwards the apartments on an entire floor in Titulescu area. And clients started to come. "I do not know how I made it in that period. I used to work 14-16 hours a day, almost to the point of exhaustion, but I had a huge enthusiasm".

Musat initially started to work with experienced lawyers, but in 1991 decided to start from scratch, recruiting only young lawyers.

Musat & Asociatii and the firms set up by lawyers that left the law firm last year collected fees worth around 50m euros, around one third of the total value of the market, put at 150-200m euros.