Law firms are not immune to the financial crisis now hurting most companies on the market, with the number of lawyers seeking a job being on the rise, but few firms are interested in hiring in this period.
"We've started to constantly receive two or three CVs per day, even from Romanian lawyers from abroad wanting to return home. We're reviewing applications and when we consider we need to boost our personnel in a certain field, we can resort to the database. Still, as a rule, we're not recruiting in spring, but in autumn, because recruiting young graduates has had the best results so far at the firm," stated Cristiana Stoica, a founding partner with Stoica & Asociatii law firm. The other founder is Valeriu Stoica, her husband and a former justice minister.
During this period, it is only a series of small and medium firms that have announced plans to increase the number of lawyers, while big players have started operating internal lawyer shifts between departments and even layoffs, according to market information.
Recent years' star fields for lawyers, such as real estate or corporate mergers, have generated few operations in recent months, a reason why turnover projections for this year are cautious, with many firms even taking into account a revenue drop from 2008.
"Our target is keeping revenues at least at last year's level, but even a drop should not upset us. On the legal services market, people should get used to more difficult periods, as well," she says.
The firm now has 35 lawyers and reached 7.3m-euro revenues in 2008, being one of the most efficient firms on the market in terms of the ratio between the number of lawyers and revenues. Stoica & Asociatii is likely to be better protected against the crisis fallout than other firms, given that 60% of the company's revenues come from litigation, a field where the number of contracts may surge this year.
The firm's most important customers include BRD, Alro, Whirlpool or Affichage, and basic fees range between 75 and 450 euros per hour. 2009 is likely to be the first difficult year for the domestic legal services market, which has seen average growth of 30% in recent years.
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