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LEGAL BOOHAHA RATING 2013

It turns out that not only the law is harsh in Ukraine, but law firms’ partners are very restrained as well. Why such a conclusion? They smile very rarely! After carefully reviewing photographs of partners of a hundred leading law firms all-Ukrainian "gloominess" of lawyers was revealed, as well as a lot of other curious facts. A hundred law firms was selected to All Fools' Day 2013 in the most serious way according to Legal 500, PLC Which Lawyer, Who’s Who Legal, Yurpractika, IFLR1000 and some other ratings. The photographs of the law firm’s partners were carefully studied and divided accordingly to the following criteria: • photographs where law firms’ partners are smiling widely; • photographs where law firms’ partners have a faint smile; • photographs without smiles or absence of a photograph. In total, profiles of 333 partners were carefully analyzed by the researchers. An attempt to estimate all the possible issues that may affect the smile of a law firm’s partner led to the following conclusions...

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The overall picture To the researchers’ delight it turned out that the vast majority of law firms prefer to introduce their partners to web-site visitors by posting partners’ photos, and only a small percentage of Ukrainian lawyers prefer photo-incognito. At the same time it was found out that only 34% of partners of the best law firms faintly smile and only 12% smile widely. The remaining 54% of partners are extremely serious, or it is really hard to call their faces smiling.

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Severe domestic lawyer Partners of foreign law firms in Ukraine smile more often than their Ukrainian counterparts: 66% of foreign law firms’ partners are smiling versus 43% of the Ukrainian law firms’ partners. Thus, the probability of meet the gloomy partner of a foreign law firm in Ukraine is only 34%. At that partners of foreign law firms have a wide smile nearly two times more often than partners of Ukrainian law firms. From this point of view, it's a pity that there are so few partners of foreign law firms in Ukraine (only 16% of the total number of law firms’ partners).

Tell me your practice, and I'll tell you how you smile Practice that partners specialize in noticeably affects their mood. Thus, the most smiling law firms’ partners specialize in pharmaceutical sphere (73% of them smile), private investment (71%), insurance (69%) and currency control (100%). At that the latter is somehow presented in Ukraine by only one happy partner. The saddest are law firms’ partners who practise family law (only 28% of them smile), civil law (30%) or criminal law (31%).

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To share one's last crust A very interesting correlation of overall number of partners in a law firm and number of its smiling partners was discovered. It turned out that even number of partners make law firm’s partners more smiling. Thus, 70% of partners of law firms with eight partners are smiling, and in law firms with four partners 56% of partners are smiling. But if the firm has three partners they smile only in 27% of cases. Thus, the partners of such firm smile three times less than in firms with 8 partners. Not much better situation with smiling is in firms with one partner (43%), five partners (47%) and seven partners (36%). By the way, most law firms of Ukraine have two or three partners.

Women are from Venus and men are from Mars? Female partners of law firms are smiling a little more often than their male counterparts: namely 16% more. At the same time, female partners are smiling widely almost 2 times more often than male partners. Surprisingly, percentage of smiling female partners of law firms is equal to percentage of gloomy male partners. However, total number of female partners among all partners of law firms in Ukraine is 26%. It should be noted that once a woman becomes a managing partner, the situation changes dramatically: female managing partners smile 10% less than male managing partners. But percentage of wide smiles of female managing partners is almost two times bigger than that of their male counterparts. At that, there are only 16% of women among all managing partners of law firms in Ukraine.

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Who is he - Ukrainian managing partner? As for the smiles of managing partners in general (both female and male), it was found that managing partners smile more rarely than other partners: 41% vs. 48%. However, there is an interesting regularity: managing partners mostly have a wide smile or do not smile at all, while "regular" partners are more likely to have a faint smile.

ÂŠ Cai & Lenard Law Firm, 2013

Too much knowledge makes the head bald The number of practices in which a law firms’ partners specialize influences the partners’ mood. Thus, the most smiling are partners who have 10 practices (80% of such partners are smiling) or 3 practices (59% are smiling). And the saddest were the partners with 5 or 12 practices (only 33% of them are smiling). In general, the most positive for partners’ mood is to have 7-10 practices, and the least positive - to have 11-18 practices. The greatest number of law firms’ partners in Ukraine specialize in 4-6 practices (almost 50% of all the partners), but they smile only in 43% of cases. Among the most smiling are partners that specialize in 7-10 practices: 58% of them are smiling. The partners who have 11, 14 or 18 practices do not smile at all.

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Young and old are not alike Finally, there is an obvious correlation between smiling partners of a law firm and the firm’s age. Most happy are partners of law firms that are at the market for more than 20 years (58% of such partners smile), a little less happy are partners of firms that are 10-20 “years old” (49% of them smile). Partners of law firms, established 6-10 years ago are sadder: only 40% of them smile, and the unhappiest are the partners of law firms established 1-5 years ago: only 27% of such partners smile. Despite the fact that this research has a humorous nature, it is based on real data that was a subjected to the most accurate analysis. Visual results of the research can be seen in our infographics. A special Rating of the Most Smiling Law Firms of Ukraine (which is not publicly available) was composed according to the research. However, any law firm can learn about its place in the Rating by sending us a letter with the corresponding request. Sincerely yours, Law Firm «Cai & Lenard»

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