On November 24-25 the annual conference “Law Firm Management” of the International Bar Association (IBA) was held in Moscow. This conference, organized for the 5th consecutive year in Moscow, is one of the most prominent events for the legal profession in Russia and the CIS. Guest and participants of the fifth annual conference were more than 200 partners and managers of law firms and advocate associations fr om 20 countries. The key topic of the whole conference was “A New Era for the Russian and CIS Economies: Challenges and Opportunities for Local and International Firms”.
The IBA President Akira Kawamura and the IBA European Co-chair Vassily Rudomino took part in the opening session of the conference and welcomed the attendees to the event. Speakers and guests of the conference discussed the effects of the recent economic and political developments on the legal market, the forecast for the next years, law firm partnership structures, strategies for the law firms, as well as specific issues of managing a firm such as social networking, tips for hiring the best talents and business development features.
Vassily Rudomino, co-chair of the conference, moderated the 1st session “A New Era for the Russian and CIS Legal Market”. He invited Alan Hodgart (Huron Consulting), an expert in legal market with an extensive experience of consulting law firms on strategy and development, to present the audience his key report on the main trends affecting the development of legal market both globally and on the local level. Managing partners of the leading Russian and Ukrainian law firms discussed the result of this research and shared their own vision of the future of their profession. Discourse on the oncoming legal market triggered the challenging and exciting discussion among the speakers and the attendees of the conference.
IBA conferences are the events of the international scale standing out the rest of the events. For the specialists from Russia and the CIS wh ere independent legal business exists for twenty years only, these IBA conferences provide a unique chance to get acquainted with and adapt the experience of the leading lawyers form the countries with a centuries professional legal practice history. The IBA conferences help Russian lawyers to share knowledge and experience, to ask relevant questions and to become active members of the international legal society.