The number of lawyers working for the biggest 22 law firms inBucharest has gone down by merely 0.5% since March, considering thedata on the Bucharest Bar Association website and the Law FirmsYearbook centralised by ZF.
The top 22 firms by number of lawyers had 837 legal advisersworking for them on November 1, compared with 841 in March thisyear.
None of the top four firms by number of lawyers registered withthe Bucharest Bar Association - Nestor Nestor Diculescu KingstonPetersen, Musat & Asociatii, Tuca, Zbarcea & Asociatii andBostina & Asociatii - saw their number of lawyers go downduring this period.
The companies that let most lawyers go are Sova & Asociatii(seven people), and D&B David & Baias (five lawyers), whilePeliFilip and Bulboaca & Asociatii hired five lawyers each, fora total of 26 and 24 during the same period.
"Internal restructuring was indeed operated in order to adjustthe team and the cost structure to the realities of the businesslaw service market. The departments were not cut in number, wefocused on optimising their size instead," said the representativesof Sova & Asociatii, where the number of lawyers fell from 20to 13 from March through November 2009.
As for D&B David si Baias, the five-lawyer litigation teammoved to PeliFilip, a firm established by a group of lawyers thatsplit from the Nestor Nestor Diculescu Kingston Petersen (NNDKP)last year.
"We are a firm that had the right size at the right moment andcontinued to develop because of the increase in customer base. Weestablished a litigation division and an employment andrestructuring department. For the litigation division we broughtonboard five people from David si Baias as of August 1, and hiredfour 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 oflawyers has almost doubled, from 18 last November to about 33-34,taking into account the newest employees and the young lawyers partof the firm who have yet to finalise all the necessary formalitiesto show up on the website of the Bucharest Bar Association.
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