Asters' Partners participated in the UBA Forum on Legal Services Market Development
On 16 May 2025, the XIX Forum "Legal Services Market Development" in honour of Oleg Makarov took place in Kyiv. The event, organised by the Ukrainian Bar Association (UBA), brought together the key market players to discuss the current challenges, topical issues and business development strategies in terms of uncertainty.
New realities — transformations, trends, challenges
Asters' Managing Partner Oleksiy Didkovskiy took part in the session where participants shared their views on the transformations in the legal business during the full-scale war.
The speakers noted that 2024 was a positive year in terms of financial efficiency, measured in hryvnia. Unfortunately, when comparing the profitability of firms in euros with the past year's figures, there was a significant decline. The panellists also tried to make cautious forecasts for 2025, pointing out that financial performance will depend on security issues, the state of the economy, clients' businesses, etc.
On the topic of profitability, the partners agreed that "conflict" practices, particularly WCC and litigation, are most in demand during the war. They also agreed that the strategy of retaining 'outsider' practices is efficient, as the demand for these legal services may change significantly for the better in the coming years.
The speakers also raised the topic of human resources and noted that the legal market has not yet experienced its shortage. Firms have enough both senior and junior lawyers, as they actively develop internship programmes for young talents and provide opportunities for career development within the firm. Law firms compete for talents not with each other, but with the corporate sector, where in-house lawyers are offered comfortable working conditions and high salaries right from the start of their careers.
Regarding work for the government as a client, the speakers agreed that it differs from work for businesses in terms of its format, communication, process modelling, etc. and requires separate project and risk management.
Partnership of the new time
Asters' Senior Partner Armen Khachaturyan moderated the session, which was dedicated to the law firm’s partners and partnerships.
The panellists discussed such topics as partner’s personal brand, gender-related aspects of management in a law firm, evolution of classic models of partnerships into new formats, specific features of a new generation of partners, partnership tracks and applicable criteria, non-lawyer partners, financial terms for partners, as well as the correlation of equity and non-equity partner structures.
Substantive comments were made on the recent spin-offs in the legal market, the reasons and incentives for legal start-ups and management restructurings based on the substitution of a founding partner by another equity partner or collective managerial forms in a law firm. A separate topic for discussion was the importance of publicity and media as factors for strengthening a law firm's brand awareness and a case study on law firm’s strategic plans in the hostile environment related to the ongoing war in Ukraine.
The recording of the discussions is available here (in Ukrainian only).
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Asters is the largest full-service law firm in Ukraine with offices in Kyiv, Brussels, London, and Washington, D.C., and access to over 125 jurisdictions through a well-developed network of partner law firms.
