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Overview
The exponential growth of Estonia’s economy during the past three years has slowed, the global recess in liquid funds having sliced the number of financial investors in the Estonian M&A and real estate markets. Private equity investors have faced problems leveraging their investments and have all but disappeared from the marketplace. However, as witnessed across the Baltics, in their place are strategic industrial buyers. The cooling of the economy and liquidity problems have provided entrepreneurs with investment opportunities, or alternatively the chance for strategic restructuring or even bankruptcy, all of which present lawyers with new business. The result is that the commercial legal market has yet to report any significant drop in work, although managing partners are nervous about the year ahead.
For a small nation, the legal market is prohibitively competitive. It can be polarised into a handful of sophisticated large firms, long established in the market and capable of complex international work. On the whole, they are consistently ranked in our top tiers. The remaining market comprises a multitude of small practices of two-to-three partners employing an equal number of associates, amongst which there are several gems in individual attorneys. ‘The big number of small or very small law firms does not make the market very transparent for foreigners searching for legal advice,’ complains one client.
There was little movement in the market during 2008. Name partner Indrek Teder of the former Teder, Glikman & Partnerid left the firm to pursue a career in politics, renaming the firm Glikman & Partnerid; and the former Hedman Osborne Clarke Alliance severed formal ties with the UK-based Osborne Clarke Alliance, rebranding as Hedman Partners.