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Do Big Law Firms Have a Future in Moldova?

By Alexei Ghertescu

I was reading with a great interest a post at WSJ's Law Blog called "Can Small Firms Handle Big, Complex Cases?" and comments to it. Really interesting; the author of the post considers the issue whether small law firms can operate effectively in comparison with big many-hundred-lawyers firms...

So, after having read the post and the comments I came to another opposite question. Can we expect BIG law firms to appear in Moldavian legal "market"? Of course, I'm not speaking about five-six hundred lawyers or more in a firm. Even a firm with 50-60 (up to a hundred) lawyers would be considered as a big one for our country. However, there are no such firms. I believe I won't be wrong if I say there are no firms in Chisinau with the number of more than ten lawyers (including partners and senior and junior associates beside supporting staff like secretaries, accountants, etc.).*

The law firms in Moldova servicing the companies demands and dealing with business issues are rather small in size (though many of them show themselves as multi-disciplinary firms with narrow-specialized lawyers. I can't still understand how you can have 10-15 areas of practice with 5-6 narrow-specialized lawyers. Can you?).

So I wonder if a big-law-firm form of operating legal business can be viable in Moldova (with only 4 million people population, that certainly influences the size of business enterprises). I don't have a clear answer to this question. I have some points on this, but nor clear and definite answer. So, if you can add something on this issue your comments are welcome...

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*I'm not saying here about joint attorneys' offices. The have a completely different structure and traditions of work as compared to the Western law firms.
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Full post as published by LAW IN MOLDOVA on January 13, 2007 (boomark / email).