KK&P Trial Lawyers’ focus is litigation and domestic arbitration cases with ‘some international elements’, says managing partner Kulkov: ‘Many traditional Russian law firms don’t have enough expertise for such cases and many large international law firms cannot compete with us here, either because they are not comfortable dealing with Russian courts and arbitral tribunals or because their fees discourage clients.’ Kulkov adds that clients are unwilling to pay half or even a third of the value of a claim to their lawyers, especially since in Russian courts it is ‘very hard’ to recover even a small part of the legal fees from the losing party.

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