Lawyers are still making money despite the crisis, as top ten firms post 90 million euro revenues

The top ten law firms on the Romanian market collected 87.6 million euros in revenues last year, down by merely 1% compared with the previous year. This was one of the markets with the lowest declines in the economy in 2009, the hardest year of the last decade, reveals a ZF analysis based on the annual revenue statements filed with the Financial Administration.

Lawyers continued to make money, even though the traditional markets, such as mergers and acquisitions, real estate or bank loans collapsed, as did the business of the retail and construction companies.

The market leader in terms of revenues was the team of lawyers at Tuca, Zbarcea & Asociatii again last year, followed by NNDKP, Musat & Asociatii, Bostina & Asociatii and Popovici, Nitu & Asociatii. Tuca Zbarcea collected 27.8 million euros last year, according to the annual revenue statements, but the amount the firm actually made stood at 22.7 million euros, with the rest of the amount collected via other companies with which they worked on legal advice projects.

Tuca Zbarcea managed to grow last year because of its shift in focus towards fields such as energy, arbitration, litigation and restructuring, of the fact that it collected a series of debts from previous years, as well as because of success fees from energy, international arbitration, real estate projects and litigations.

Ion Nestor and Gheorghe Musat's firms which had vied over the top two positions for fifteen years are now second and third on the market.