WHICH LAWYER IN ROMANIA September 16, 2015 14:51
While most mid-size and large law firms have structured themselves to offer a broad range of services, to keep as much as possible of the work internally, a growing number of lawyers are setting up boutique for law practices. Mostly spin-offs from the larger firms, groups of lawyers are setting up shop to get more personal with the service they offer. “We are strictly positioned under the label of our business cards: tax, litigation, consultancy,” says Luisiana Dobrinescu of Dobrinescu Dobrev. She adds: “we would like to be excessively good in our filed of law: fiscal law. We are training ourselves at the highest level possible and we intend to keep our close approach with our clients. We adore the civil law and excel in the fiscal domain.“
These new firms are choosing to focus the work of the entire firm on one area of the law than try to maintain the general practice culture of big law firms.
The growing trend toward specialized “boutique” firms that focus on one specific area of the law, such as white collar crime and corruption, intellectual property, tax and litigation allow firms to establish themselves as the “niche legal experts”.
A pragmatic approach is given also by Luisiana Dobrinescu: “The Bar and the Union are dramatically in need of corporate evolution as their foundation is still ruled by a law from 1995. The position of the Dean (any Dean of the 41 Bar Associations) is not as much at stake as a leader, as the presidency of the Union of Bars. In fact, the Union of Bar Associations should once again revert to a Union of Lawyers, in order to better represent the profession as a whole, and not the institution of the Bars. At the highest level the profession itself should be given more of a chance to shape the institutions and not the other way around. A true debate to the purpose of such reform has either consistently been discouraged, or simply failed to appear. The newly elected board of the Bucharest Bar may well set things straight.”
