Asters' Senior Partner Armen Khachaturyan delivered a presentation and acted as a moderator at one of the four sessions of VI Annual Legal Forum "Development of Legal Services Market in Ukraine - 2010" held in Kyiv on 26 February 2010 under the auspices of the Ukrainian Bar Association. The Forum is used to be the major event at the Ukrainian legal market.

Armen Khachaturyan made his presentation "E pluribus unum: psychological aspects of partnership in a law firm" at the Forum’s discussion session dedicated to important issues of maintaining partnership in a law firm. He emphasized the need to consider psychological profiles of partners as a factor of the law firm management, described common psychological types of partners, possibility of their psychological compatibility, addressed partner’s crisis situation, including its reasons and consequences for partnership. He also pointed at the lessons of partner psychological compatibility related to disadvantages of perfectionism, partner’s ability to make positive judgments in negative circumstances, curb idealization, come to agreements and win over negative instincts.

Armen Khachaturyan also acted as a moderator at the Forum’s session "Our clients: select and be selected", at which law firms’ partners discussed issues of pricing and competition at the legal market, business efforts to engage clients, boutique practices, as well as imminent importance of implementing new marketing tools. The discussion at this session was interactive and thought-provoking as the raised issues appeared to be really hot at the time of economic crisis. The speakers were asked to answer many questions with extensive comments of listeners from the seats. As a moderator, Armen Khachaturyan guided the discussion towards the most challenging issues, such as payment of a finder’s fee to a third party rainmaker, including a client's employee; ethical challenges related to payment of outside counsel’s fee not directly by the client, but by its counterparty, as agreed with the client; possibilities of suing a non-paying client, etc.

This year the Forum was attended by more than 150 legal professionals representing leading law firms from Ukraine, Russia, Moldova, and Belarus who discussed problems related to legal management and prospects of development of practice of law in these jurisdictions. Asters was represented at the Forum also by Managing Partner Oleksiy Didkovskiy, Partner Oleksandr Padalka, and Administrative Director Tetyana Podobedova.

For the sixth consecutive time, the Forum gathered over 150 legal professionals representing leading law firms from Ukraine, Russia, Moldova, and Belarus to discuss pressing issues of legal management, currently confronted problems and prospects of the legal market development in this country.

The issues that were discussed by the legal professionals at the Forum also included taking stock of the year 2009, projecting major trends that will be prevailing in 2010, and identifying strategic guidelines for the legal market development. A number of speakers from Ukraine shared their perspectives on strategic planning, budgeting, and selection of law firm management tools, while foreign guests intimated on the current status and specifics of legal markets functioning in their respective countries.