A joint presentation by partners at BARRISTERS, LLC for "Legal Practice"

“A team of specialists is more effective than self-sufficient professionals, which is why we’ve joined forces”—the partners of Barristers, J.L.P.

The Ukrainian legal industry is undergoing a wave of mergers. Several of the largest law firms have already announced merger processes. The consolidation of law firms, the unification of minds and ideals, and new opportunities for better client service—these are the factors that led to the merger under the Barristers JSC legal brand, as explained to “Legal Practice” by Barristers LLP partners Kostyantyn Hloba, Illia Novikov, and .

— Tell us about the history of the firm’s formation—what led to the merger?

Konstantin Globa (K.G.): Of course, at the beginning of our careers, we all operated separately. We were independent attorneys who were not dependent on one another. Some of us were members of certain law firms, while others worked as self-employed attorneys, but eventually we came to the conclusion that we needed to form a team and adopt a team-based approach to our work. And all of this needed to be developed under a single brand that would allow us to remain independent attorneys, yet united by a single vision, a single direction, and as members of a single team.

— Why did you choose this name for the company?

K.G.: Why the Barristers brand specifically? Because we’re all individuals, and we didn’t want to name the firm—as is customary—with a last name plus “…and partners.” We didn’t want to be bound by such conventions, since the very idea behind our existence and creation was rooted in individuality. Today, we are shaping the standards of the profession, the firm, and the brand, while essentially still in the early stages of the firm’s development. In doing so, we draw on the experience of each of us, all of whom are ready to emerge as market leaders as a unified team. At the same time, we preserve the individuality of every employee, partner, lawyer, and attorney within the team’s work.

- Ilya, how did you become part of Barristers LLP?

Ilya Novikov (I.M.): I’m actually in a unique position at Barristers Law Firm. Unlike the rest of the team, I’m not a Ukrainian lawyer, but a foreign attorney admitted to the Ukrainian bar. To my knowledge, this is the first time a foreign attorney has become a partner in a Ukrainian law firm.

I live and work in Russia, but since 2014, when a series of “Ukrainian” criminal cases came up—cases that began to take up a significant portion of my time—I had to travel to Kyiv every month. In the fall of 2015, I completed the registration process in the Unified Register of Lawyers of Ukraine. At the time, I had no specific plans to work in the Ukrainian legal market. I simply had a professional need to send legal requests on my own behalf, because it turned out that Russian courts do not understand (or, more likely, pretend not to understand) how a Russian attorney can send requests abroad. Later, however, it turned out that other options didn’t satisfy them either, and the issue wasn’t the lawyer’s status, but rather that they fundamentally didn’t want to see any Ukrainian documents in the case at all. But it was important to test and exhaust all possibilities.

We met Oleksiy Shevchuk (managing partner of Barristers Law Firm—Ed.) in the spring of 2016, when I was offered the position of representative of the National Bar Association of Ukraine (NBAU) in Moscow. I was undergoing the approval process with the UNA’s International Committee. Oleksiy and I turned out to have mutual acquaintances, shared interests, and common ideas. The idea of working together came up immediately. That same year, 2016, we worked together to defend Vyacheslav Platon in a highly controversial and deeply painful case, in which Ukraine had unlawfully extradited him to Moldova. As we worked on the case, it became clear that we were on the same page and could continue our collaboration.

When Oleksiy Shevchuk and Denys Ponomarenko (it was primarily their initiative) agreed to merge the Odesa and Kyiv law firms under the Barristers JL brand, I was invited to join them, and I gladly accepted the offer. Under the Law on the Bar, I am authorized to practice in Ukraine in cases involving a foreign or international element. In fact, virtually any criminal case contains such an element, since the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and the case law of the European Court of Human Rights apply to almost all cases. And aside from the formal legal aspects, there are also strategic considerations and tactical skills. Working in Russian courts provides extremely valuable experience for a lawyer: the more arbitrariness and lawlessness there is, the more the defense attorney is tempered. Experience in another jurisdiction—especially one as challenging as Russia’s—is quite valuable. That’s why I joined Barristers LLP, and that’s what I want to bring to the firm.

At my initiative, the partners at Barristers LLP have also become involved in defending Ukrainian citizens in Russia. The number of such cases is not decreasing; on the contrary, it is only growing. Among the most recent cases I’m handling is that of Ukrainian attorney Igor Kiyashko (a lawyer from Poltava who is currently accused of espionage and is set to stand trial). My partners and I have agreed to work together on both sides of the border to help Kiyashko and his family. On the one hand, this is a criminal case just like any other, involving a defendant—a client who needs representation; on the other hand, since he is our colleague, professional solidarity compels us to do everything in our power.

— But surely, working together creates synergy for productive work?

K.G.: It certainly helps. There are 24 hours in a day, and if you’re working alone, you can only handle a certain amount of work in a given unit of time. But an organization—a law firm—allows us to effectively expand the scope of what we can achieve. And it expands our capabilities even in terms of intellectual preparation for the trial. In any case, when we enter a case, we share ideas—the diversity of opinions and perspectives certainly helps us achieve the results we’re seeing today in Ukrainian courts and beyond. So that’s a huge advantage. As a team, we can work in pairs, trios, or quartets. This allows us to divide responsibilities during court proceedings and to more accurately convey to the court, the prosecution, and the general public all the nuances of the evidence we’ve gathered and the work we’ve done. For a solo attorney—even a highly professional one—it can sometimes be very difficult to handle the tasks that we tackle as a law firm.

— So what is the “unique selling point,” the uniqueness of your firm?

Denis Ponomarenko (D.P.): What makes us unique is that we, as “criminal defense” attorneys (in the best sense of the word), have been brought together by Barristers Law Firm. All of our lawyers and partners are capable of running their own independent practices. Currently, there is probably no other firm that has brought together, so to speak, self-sufficient attorneys into a single team and is developing specifically in this area—the criminal law field. Our firm handles national criminal proceedings, criminal proceedings in other jurisdictions, as well as cases before the International Criminal Court (ICC). Our defense practice at the ICC is a unique feature that sets us apart from other law firms.

Objectively speaking, I can say this: we do not rely on cookie-cutter solutions. We strive to think outside the box. In the Ukrainian context, this unconventional approach enables us to build an effective defense in criminal cases (including political criminal cases, where, for example, the outcome may seem predetermined, but a series of unconventional tactics allows us to achieve the opposite result). In this way, we are establishing legal precedent.

— Tell us about development trends. What do you expect in the future?

D.P.: We have a number of interesting projects related not only directly to our practice but also to our development—these are memorandum-of-understanding projects with higher education institutions. A new project will be launched soon—a school of practical criminal defense, where students will be able to gain practical knowledge from the attorneys at Barristers Law Firm and effectively address the gaps in modern education in Ukraine. I believe the geographic scope will mirror the firm’s locations—namely, Odesa, Kyiv, and Kharkiv.

Currently, we are participating in the Legal High School project, where our company’s experts conduct classes, explaining the specifics of criminal proceedings in Ukraine to the audience.

In addition, this year we opened an office in Latvia, thereby expanding the scope of our legal services and entering the European market—which brings new opportunities, new clients, and a new level of legal service delivery.