Two years and five months after the start of the Ukrainian war, the end of the conflict is not in sight. The local legal market has changed substantially and Timur Bondaryev, founding partner and managing partner of Arzinger, one of the largest law firms in the country, talks about how they have handled the difficult situation from a human management perspective, ensuring the well-being of the team and carrying out reengineering of the firm and its services.
With figures from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (Acnudh), Statista reported that until February 15, 2024 there have been 30,457 civilian victims during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, of which 10,582 were fatalities. OHCHR specified, however, that the real figures could be higher.
According to the same portal, the war has left nearly 5 million refugees, who now live -mainly- in Russia, Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic and the United Kingdom. The economic losses are considerable: according to the British publication Economics Observatory, the Ukrainian economy is now just a fraction of what it was before the war. In the first year of the conflict, the country lost between 30 and 35% of GDP.
Poverty in the country skyrocketed from 5.5% of the population to 24.2% in 2022, according to the World Bank. Out of a population of 32 million people in 2022, the war has pushed 7.1 million more into poverty, undoing 15 years of progress.
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Is it possible to prepare for a war?
“We knew what was coming, there were several reports and we had the information provided by British and American intelligence. It was all over the media, you simply couldn't ignore [the fact that] the Russian army was on the border,” says Bondaryev.
“We hoped that if something happened, it would be in the Eastern part of the country. No one could have predicted that they would attack Kyiv. By any standard of atrocity, this was unexpected. Our riskiest scenario was that they would reach northern Ukraine and even if they reached Kyiv, they would never reach the western part of Ukraine. And this is exactly what happened,” he adds.
The firm prepared itself the best way it could: renting properties in the Western part of the country for team members who needed it, as well as training staff on how to react in the event of a bomb explosion, being left homeless, injured, etc., in addition to having cash reserves, taking into account the potential collapse of the local financial system.
“People started leaving shortly before the invasion. Some people started leaving much earlier,” Bondaryev said. Then “we started experiencing big problems with electricity, blackouts, and people started buying generators… I think they have bombed about 90% of the generating facilities in the country. That means that even now, before winter, we have blackouts and 8, 10, 12 hours a day without electricity,” he says.
However, Bondaryev is not daunted and seeks a way around the situation, arguing that 'you learn to live with problems'.
“For example, we have become accustomed to not turning on the air conditioning because we have to save electricity. It is like a “social agreement” in the country in which we have to ration electricity and now, everyone understands it.”
Metamorphosis
The pandemic served as a prelude to war, reflects Bondaryev. “We learned a lot by working remotely (…) Another very important lesson was the importance of mental health. The fact that people were in isolation conditions, where they could not leave their homes, affected their well-being. They were deprived of a normal social life, they couldn't communicate and that's when we started to feel that this was wrong. “People started to lose communication skills.”
After the shock of the covid, the invasion came. “During war, your daily experience is completely unexpected: death threats everywhere, possible bomb attacks, sleepless nights. People can't sleep at night and are exhausted in the morning. On top of that, you don't know what will happen tomorrow. Your sense of predictability has disappeared... You talk to someone and you know that his/her house has fallen and that person no longer exists. You meet someone for coffee and then the person doesn't show up and you discover that they have just died," he confesses.
“On the street, the military police called a person and told him they were going to the front. You don't see your family because many families have been living apart. For example, I sent my family to Vienna during the first days of the war, and they returned six months later. But some people haven't been able to see their families for one reason or another, they couldn't travel, they didn't have money to travel or anything else.”
To support its staff, the firm implemented a “psychological hotline,” through an agreement with a company specialized in psychological services.
“People can call anytime and talk about their problems. It was very useful and there was a lot of demand,” Bondaryev said.
Leading by example
At the beginning of the war, the firm managed to place around 40 professionals at member firms of its network of friends in various countries around the world. “A lot of people said 'we don't know what he or she will do, since he or she is not a qualified Finnish, Austrian, German or whatever lawyer. But send her/him. Years later these same people say: 'Timor, do you have more of these people? They are so good”.
And for those who stayed in the country, among them all the members of the management team and the partners, it was important (both from a symbolic and a practical point of view) to send the message that “we are still here”, in good times, in bad times and in war too.”
“This has boosted our morale internally... Imagine you're an associate sitting somewhere sheltering, working on a client matter, and the partners call you from somewhere far away, safe and sound, saying 'hey, what's up?' We are not going to meet the deadline! Yes, but I'm sitting in a shelter and a bomb just fell around the corner!" he reflects.
Bondaryev says that, as the crisis developed, work began to return. “As one of the largest law firms in the market, the majority of our work is international in nature. "Most of the international clients who continue to do business in Ukraine, the ones who were here before the war started, understand that it is just a matter of time, that the war will end, and they just stand firm," he said.
Most of the work, he reveals, focuses on 'opportunity' transactions: acquisition of assets at very low prices or as a hedging strategy for companies, due to banking restrictions imposed by the government, which makes the repatriation of capital impossible. The other type of work they have focused on, Bondaryev says, corresponds to sanctions, white collar crimes, arbitrations (driven by damage to infrastructure). “We are talking about hundreds of billions of dollars in damages to Ukraine,” he says.
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Patriotism as a talent acquisition and retention strategy
As a consequence of the above, and in line with a global trend, recruiting legal talent in Ukraine is increasingly complicated. The war, on the other hand, has only accentuated the problem. The firm, however, saw an opportunity.
“In 2014, after the annexation of Crimea, our firm made the decision not to work with Russian clients. There were some exceptions where we worked with some Russian private investors who left Russia many years ago (...) We have abandoned the main oligarch groups and all State-owned companies. We didn't want to work with them. We managed to restructure the client portfolio and, when the war started, we did not have any exposure to Russian clients (...) That is not the case of other major Ukrainian law firms, where up to 75% of their portfolios correspond to Russian clients , and not just any Russians, but really toxic Russians,” he reveals.
Aside from what was coming in terms of international sanctions, there is a patriotic theme. “Imagine that the war has just begun. A family member is on the front line and you are a lawyer, you are asked to issue a legal opinion for a Russian State company. Can you believe it?” he asks.
Additionally, the firm has carried out different pro bono projects, among which stands out legal advice to the families of soldiers who fell in Ukraine, to obtain compensation after their death. Regarding the future, Bondaryev is convinced that “the really big projects will only restart when the war is over, so we are preparing for that,” he says. And he doesn't just do it from a professional point of view.
“Many families have been living apart, it has been a very hard test (...) We have seen a huge increase in divorces, for example. But it has also been a great test of resilience. It is a huge psychological burden for a family to live apart. But what can you do? Unfortunately, hope for the best, a change. Now the main thing is to defeat Putin and then life will improve,” he concludes.
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