St Petersburg’s place in the sun

There's a palpable sense of pride among the lawyers from Russia and other former Soviet republics now gathered at the third CIS Local Counsel Forum in St Petersburg. Not only has the region achieved remarkable economic growth but the Russian soccer team has made it to the semi-finals of the European Championships.

"Today, Russia can say that it has one of the leading football teams in the world to go with one of the fastest growing economies," said Irina Paliashvili from Ukrainian firm RULG-Ukrainian Legal Group.

And now it's time for the region's law firms to have their turn in the sun. That was the message of the opening remarks from Dimitry Afanasiev, name partner and chairman of host firm Egorov Puginsky Afanasiev & Partners. Afanasiev said the conference should focus on pinpointing what he described as the "recipe for the successful independent or national firm in Russia or any other former Soviet republic."

He praised the contributions of the US legal market in training CIS lawyers — Afanasiev himself practised in Philadelphia as a young attorney — but insisted that it was now time for the local firms to stand on their own two feet, "We have come of age," he asserted.

Afanasiev congratulated the organisers of the conference for building links between law firms in the former Soviet republics. "Now, more than 15 years since the collapse of the USSR, we're talking to each other again," he said. It's imperative, he went on, that the Russian legal community mirror the success of Russian companies and play its own role on the international stage.

"Why should a deal between a company from Tajikistan and one from Azerbaijan be conducted under English law?" he asked. Some 200 lawyers from the Commonwealth of Independent States (the countries of the former Soviet Union), Europe and the US are attending the forum, including attorneys from Linklaters, Spain's Uría Menendez, Germany’s Hengeler Mueller and Russia's ALRUD and Pepeliaev Goltsblat & Partners.

On the agenda for tonight: cheering for Russia in the televised Russia v Spain match in the conference hall.