Egorov growth continues with litigation bolt-on

12 September 2011 | By Dale McEwan

Sergey Kovalev, managing partner at Principium, will join Egorov’s Moscow office as a partner. His team of lawyers and three personal assistants will accompany him.

This will bring lawyer headcount in Egorov’s dispute resolution department to 70. The department covers Moscow, St Petersburg, Kiev, Minsk, Astana and London.

“For me, it’s an opportunity to try to work on a new level with new opportunities and to have a presence in different countries like Ukraine and Kazakhstan,” said Kovalev.

“[Egorov] has a lot of international projects and it could help me get to an international level of service. It could give me a new experience.”

Kovalev added that his team has supported him in his decision, and hope to be exposed to a wider variety of work as a consequence of the merger.

Over the last two years, Principium lawyers have worked on projects with an accumulated value of claims standing at more than 40bn Russian rubles (£840m).

Dmitry Afanasiev, chairman of Egorov Puginsky Afanasiev & Partners, said in a statement: “The fact that this team of talented Russian lawyers known for their successful court practice has joined us means that the legal community trusts our firm in its efforts to consolidate the best talents of the domestic legal market to strengthen its leading positions in Russia and the CIS.”

Kovalev has signed a partnership agreement and the Principium team joins Egorov today (Monday 12 September).

This latest development follows Egorov’s merger with Magisters, announced in July this year (19 July 2011 http://www.thelawyer.com/egorov-and-magisters-merge-to-create-cis-giant/1008691.article).