You're reading: Ukrainian works her way to partner in London-based firm

Irina Tymczyszyn: the first post-independence Ukrainian lawyer to become partner at a major foreign law firm abroad.

What does it take for a Ukrainian to become a partner at a leading international law firm? The answer is hardly surprising: have thick skin and work hard all the way up from the bottom.

It worked for Irina Tymczyszyn, who is known as the first post-independence Ukrainian lawyer to become a partner at a major law firm abroad. On Jan. 1, 40-year-old Tymczyszyn became a partner in Bryan Cave, an international law firm with 24 offices worldwide.

Still a Ukrainian citizen, Tymczyszyn practices with the International Arbitration Team and Commercial Litigation Client Service Group. She chairs the firm’s Commonwealth of Independent States Group, providing services to former Soviet Union clients, particularly those in Ukraine and Russia.

I was not English, not a white male, and did not go to either Oxford or Cambridge. My first job interview lasted about 5 minutes.— Irina Tymczyszyn

Having come to Manchester in 1995 as one of the first students to study abroad through a foreign funded education program, Tymczyszyn says it helped not realizing how difficult it would be to become a lawyer in Britain.

“If I knew how hard it is to graduate and to get a training contract, I would probably not have done it,” Tymczyszyn says, speaking to Kyiv Post by telephone from her office in London.

In the mid-1990s, people from Eastern Europe were seen as “something alien and exotic,” Tymczyszyn said. She was hardly a typical aspiring UK lawyer at the time.

Since law enforcement bodies are not always predictable in Russia and Ukraine, our clients feel more comfortable with us not having the office where the law enforcement can come and take interest in its contents, including documents that are confidential— Irina Tymczyszyn

“I was not English, not a white male, and did not go to either Oxford or Cambridge. My first job interview lasted about 5 minutes. They said: ‘We just wanted to see what a real Ukrainian is.’ Maybe they thought I would have a tail and horns. Another time the  interviewer, also a woman, was stunned when I mentioned having two young children. The interview was over pretty fast and abruptly.”

Having applied to top 100 law firms, she received her training contract at CMS Cameron McKenna, and then worked for several other legal companies dealing with international arbitration.

Five years ago, she moved to Bryan Cave, an American law group. It was there that she realized that the American way of doing business is much more appealing to her than the British way.

“British care a lot about the exterior – which school you went to, who your parents are. Americans are much less formal in that way. For them, it’s about you delivering and clients being satisfied with you. Everything else is secondary, even if you dye your hair pink,” Tymczyszyn says.

One might say Tymczyszyn is a typical example of a self-made person. Coming from the small town of Buchach in Ternopil Oblast from a family of engineers, Tymczyszyn enrolled to Kyiv’s Pedagogical University in 1990 with the aim of becoming a teacher.

When in 1992 she learned that Kyiv Mohyla Academy is reopening, more than 150 years since it was shut down by the Russian czar, she enrolled to study political science taking as many law courses as she could, since the Academy did not have Law department at the moment.

For the next years, Tymczyszyn was studying at two universities at the same time, getting her B.A. at the pedagogical university in 1994.

She says she recalls the day that changed her life as if it happened yesterday.
“Somebody I knew from the International Relations office bumped into me in the corridor and asked me if they could send my application to the master program sponsored by the Open Society and the British Foreign Office to study in Manchester. They needed a person who already had a B.A., and there was none at the university. I agreed and then forgot all about it,” she said.

Soon Tymczyszyn became one of the first Ukrainian students to receive a scholarship to study abroad. She graduated with an M.A. from Manchester University in 1996.

Becoming a partner 16 years later added responsibility and administrative work, Tymczyszyn says. She is also in charge of hiring people, as the company expands. However, Bryan Cave does not have immediate plans to open an office in Kyiv or anywhere else in the CIS region.

“Since law enforcement bodies are not always predictable in Russia and Ukraine, our clients feel more comfortable with us not having the office where the law enforcement can come and take interest in its contents, including documents that are confidential,” Tymczyszyn says.

Another reason is that Tymczyszyn believes that the best legal advice in domestic disputes has to be sought from Ukrainian lawyers, who know best ways to resolve the situation.

“Apart from the entirely legal information, they can also give you more information, like the fact that, for instance, a company you are about to sue is owned by the president’s son so there is no chance to win against it in court,” says Tymczyszyn.

She is bound by confidentiality agreements and cannot reveal any names and titles of her clients. But says many cases involve unlawful breaking of contracts, one side providing false information prior to signing of the contract.

“There are often construction disputes when things did not go as expected and the question of reimbursement, equipment arises. These are contracts for at least ten million dollars, sometimes hundreds of millions,” Tymczyszyn says.

Being Ukrainian in London, Tymczyszyn feels like she has to promote Ukrainian culture in the country where little is known about it. She is on board of the Ukrainian British City Club, and is one of the most active members of a Ukrainian school in London where she is directing and producing Ukrainian children plays and musicals.

Kyiv Post staff writer Svitlana Tuchynska can be reached

at [email protected].