You're reading: Antika Law Firm is betting on proficient consulting

Antika Law Firm appeared on the Ukrainian market of legal services in November 2010. At the time its founding partners, Alexey Kot and Andrey Kuznetsov, already had more than 10 years of experience in law and had implemented a number of projects for national and international companies. Alexander Burtovoy joined the partners at the beginning of 2011.

Dr. Alexey Kot, the managing partner of Antika Law Firm recalls: “Before the establishment of Antika, Andrey Kuznetsov and I worked for years at one of the top law firms in Ukraine. Alexander Burtovoy headed the Legal Department at Ghelamco Ukraine, a member of the Belgian group of companies Ghelamco – one of the leading developers in Central and Eastern Europe. Аlexander previously had a solid grounding in the sphere of project financing, cooperation with government authorities and IFO. From the very beginning of the firm’s work a strong team of 15 skilled lawyers worked with us. They had experience in representing and protecting clients’ interests in areas such as corporate and commercial law, litigation, bankruptcy, arbitration, antitrust and protection against unfair competition, mergers and acquisitions, real estate, and investments”.

“We started to actively develop the direction of energy, energy efficiency, mining, the provision of comprehensive services in the field of development and management of real estate when Alexander Burtovoy joined us,” says Alexey Kot.

In 2016, Maxim Korchagin, who worked for Antika from the very first days of its establishment, and Sergii Korniienko, who came from the industrial sector, became partners of the company.

Betting on development

“The market for legal consulting is highly competitive in Ukraine. We regularly meet new challenges, which for us are an incentive for development. This would be impossible without a strong team, which has almost doubled over the years of the company’s operations. The average age of our lawyers is about 33 years old.

On the one hand, these are young and ambitious professionals with an active life position, who are constantly improving and developing, and they use the knowledge and experience they have gained to solve the problems of our clients. Together with them, it is easy to solve the non-standard and complex tasks that customers set before the company. On the other hand, these are specialists with a solid and reliable professional skeleton,” says Alexander Burtovoy, a partner of Antika Law Firm.

The partners to the firm have more than 20 years of experience in the field of jurisprudence. They are part of the cohort of those who formed the juridical consulting market.

“We respect the traditions in law, but at the same time understand that the legal services market in Ukraine is in a state of constant transformation. This is due to various factors: the general state of the economy in the country, legislative changes, technological progress, etc. Therefore, we not only are tracking trends and tendencies in the market, but also become the generator of changes,” says Kot, the managing partner of Antika, explaining the firm’s approaches to business development.

In particular, Kot is a Member of the Judicial Reform Council under the President of Ukraine, as well as a member of the Scientific and Advisory Council of the Supreme Economic Court of Ukraine.

Burtovoy is the deputy chairman of the Ukrainian Bar Association Energy, Oil and Gas Committee. He was a Member of the Public Council of the State Agency on Energy Efficiency and Energy Saving of Ukraine for four years, where he took an active part in the development of regulatory documents in the field of energy saving and energy efficiency, and the financing of investment projects supported by the government and IFOs. He developed a series of regulations on the budget code and external debt, and improved procedures for initiating the attraction of credit resources and the financing of investment projects in Ukraine with the participation of IFOs, etc. He has been involved in projects with NEFCO, the Finance Ministry, the EBRD, the World Bank, and KfW.

Tendency and trends

The partners of Antika Law Firm stress that corporate law services are in great demand among the clients of the firm, and not for the first time. That is no surprise. The development and improvement of legislation in the corporate sphere, especially in matters of regulating the activities of joint stock companies – these are the key reasons for this.

The fundamental basis for the increase in demand for legal consulting services in the field of corporate governance is the introduction of the commercialization of squeeze-out and sale-out procedures. There is also a high demand for lawyers’ services in dispute resolution.

“The representatives of various industries are among our clients: agribusiness, automotive, chemical industry and pharmaceuticals, insurance, telecommunications, IT, energy and natural resources, oil and gas, food, manufacturing and trading companies, developers, and financial institutions. We also work with representatives of the public sector and private clients,” says Kuznetsov, a partner of Antika.

“Over our eight years in the market we have managed not only to retain our main pool of clients, but also to expand the number of services we provide. Our client portfolio also grew through attracting companies that were on the side of opponents during negotiations, as well as those who lost in court and arbitrations cases in which we advised clients. This is a significant indicator of trust and loyalty in our opinion. In order to preserve and build on this, we must constantly maintain a high level of expertise and quality of services provided, to offer our clients the most optimal and best solutions to their issues,” Kot emphasizes.