Crisis periods have cleaned up legal service landscape

KLAIPEDA - With the crisis forcing job terminations, complicating work relationships and, therefore, causing an abundance of split families, lawyers have been seeing an influx of legal service-seeking clients.

“No doubt, lawyers have been riding high over the last years, as their services were very sought-after. The economic downturn has caused a hike in demand for them, as there were, and still are, many people who were fired without receiving severance compensation. Some employers shunned paying salaries to their workers, as others were not compensated for working extra hours. The  problems at work and the ensuing emigration wave, in turn, have strained family relationships which, in turn, have resulted in more divorces and alimony payments, or their recaptures,” Mindaugas Jacinevicius, a Kaunas-based lawyer, said.
He notices that many people, whose rights have been violated, often do not hurry to seek legal aid, expecting that “the villain employer” will soften if asked for the deserved pay repeatedly or, “the scoundrel husband” will be talked into sending child support if rebuked by the whole kin.

“There is the strong image about lawyers, that their services are very costly and hardly affordable for the ordinary Joe. In fact, with an army of defenders out there, most legal services, particularly in large cities, due to high competition, have become cheaper. Throughout the crisis, many people from socially sensitive groups found out about the state-provided primary legal services that many had not heard of before,” Jacinevicius pointed out.
He relates that, before the crisis, many attorney’s offices would deal with putting in order real estate purchases or sales. With the crisis setting in, this kind of activity was nearly wiped out, being swiftly replaced with other legal activities related to bankruptcy, debt recovery and enterprise restructuring.

Jacinevicius says that law firm mergers are characteristic in the crisis years, a result of the striving to render more complex legal services at more affordable rates. “The cream of the most sought-after lawyers charges up to 1,000 litas (290 euros) per hour. That is an incomprehensible amount for most Lithuanians. However, larger legal firms usually provide  significantly less expensive legal aid, the result of the mergers,” Jacinevicius noted.
Kestutis Kvainauskas, attorney at law and senior partner at Ecovis Miskinis, Kvainauskas and partners lawyer office, said to The Baltic Times that the law firm employs 13 lawyers, including 6 attorneys. He says that, in the past year, the structure of Ecovis legal services “have not effectively changed.”

“The structure of post-crisis legal services remains the same, being dominated by issues of insolvency and non-payment. However, lately, we have been observing a decrease in this kind of litigation. What is possibly a good sign, we have started seeing lately a certain increase in legal services related to serving commercial agreements,” Kvainauskas said.
The shift from enterprise acquisition and merger-related legal issues to insolvency and debt recovery cases marks the whole crisis and post-crisis period, he says.

The attorney describes competition in the market as “high.” He says that, in the segment of business law, not only commercial law lawyers compete, but also such service rendering law firms, which, he says, often offer cheaper and unified solutions that are not adopted to the needs of an individual client.

Kvainauskas, however, believes better times are to come. “I reckon the service structure will eventually come back to the pre-crisis level, seeing more legal work related to commercial deals and enterprise acquisitions. I expect a decrease in legal work volume related to debt recovery, insolvency and bankruptcies,” the Ecovis attorney and senior partner said.

Another attorney, Laimonas Marcinkevicius, project manager and leading partner of Juridicon, an attorney’s office that has been operating since 1991, said to The Baltic Times that the law firm, in the beginning, provided legal services on enterprise establishment and service as well as enterprise administration and business consultation to small businesses.
Since 1996, the law firm has focused on foreign investment consultations as well as international tax law.
“Having chosen the niche legal service strategy, specializing in the field of tax, we have become the segment leader,” Marcinkevicius maintained.

He admits, however, that the firm’s activity has been considerably affected by the structural alterations in the global markets, such as new regulations on the national and international law level on money laundering prevention, the state’s increasing role as tax administrator, off-shore business expansion and some other factors.
“The transformations have made us adapt to the stricter service-providing conditions, as flexibility has decreased in some fields, and service prices and their provision terms increased,” Marcinkevicius pointed out.
He says that the legal aid market has become increasingly wary of cheap short-solutions and started being more appreciative of reliable and safe, but often complicated and complex, solutions, putting the price factor behind.

“In the last years, the legal services for off-shore companies have definitely become more complex, as the need to have constant, reliable and experienced law partners in different foreign countries has risen. Our service expansion as well as tax-related litigation increase also marks the last years,” the attorney said.

With the structural changes in the largest cities, lawyers in Lithuanian provinces mostly avoid this. “I really cannot say I have been shaken up somehow by the structural changes due to the crisis. Lawyers in the provinces deal with quite different specifics, encompassing all law fields, as those in large cities usually specialize in a certain sector. From that point of view, the basis of my clientele has been the same, irrespective of the pre-crisis, crisis or post-crisis periods,” Aldona Stasiulaitiene, an attorney in Kretinga, in the western part of the country, said to The Baltic Times.

If looking over an entire attorney’s career, she says she has been through some “transcendental transformation” – going from defending murderers in the most horrific criminal cases to representing their victims’ interests, usually in civil lawsuits. “After defending killers all those years, I have to admit, I had become too hard on myself, feeling gut-wrenching guilt. To redeem this, therefore, I switched to the other side of the court, representing their victims’ civil interests. It has given me peace,” the attorney confessed.

Asked about the biggest part of the legal workload, she did not hesitate, saying, “Due to the economic difficulties and the ensuing emigration wave, there are a lot more divorces and a good deal of other litigation due to strained family relationships.”
“Husbands and life partners go abroad promising to take care of the family and children, but, alas, the distance and time spent apart chills off even the hottest love. Then, as a rule, husbands seek divorce while betrayed women hurry to the courts in attempts to secure child support and to split estates. These kinds of cases, very intricate and intertwined, prevail on the provincial attorney’s desk,” Stasiulaitiene said.

She says, however, she has to be “a jack of all trades” in Kretinga. “Most of my clients have been around for many years. Their grandparents used to come for legal advice, then their children took over their relay, and now the youngest generation opens my office door. It is what I call a generational thing, though sure, with quite different specifics,” the lawyer stressed.
Besides the divorce law-related cases, she says she is also swamped with proprietorship restoration civil cases. “I am seeing a second wave of such cases. Ten years ago, with the adoption of the law on proprietorship restoration, many people took advantage of it restoring their rights to real estate that their parents owned before the war and that was expropriated by the Soviets. However, those that missed the deadline for the restoration, or decided not to benefit from the law, now make up the bulk of my clients. These kinds of cases are also very complex, but I am happy to be out there for the people I have known long,” Stasiulaitiene said.