Behind the unusual name of this newly founded firm – SOG in cooperation with Kinstellar – stands a new brand on the market of legal services. This is one of the largest regional law firms in terms of the number of offices, clients, employees and revenue
The new firm faces a challenging period in which it will combine the strengths and legal talent of both sides I order to strengthen its teams and deepen its expertise in key areas of law. And here Milan Samardžić, one of its partners and founders, reveals just how they will achieve all this.
The firm at which you are a partner and founder represents something special and unique on the legal services market. Could you tell us more about it?
Kinstellar is a legal services market leader in Central and Southeast Europe, with offices in 11 dominions and a team of more than 400 lawyers. Apart from Serbia, SOG in cooperation with Kinstellar will focus primarily on the wider area of the former Yugoslavia.
However, in joining forces with Kinstellar, we will have the possibility to provide services to clients across the entire CEE region from Belgrade. Kinstellar was created by separating the offices of Linklaters from the CEE region and uniting them in a fully integrated office under a new brand.
Kinstellar’s business strategy is to provide international clients in these less economically developed countries with legal services of a uniform quality, at a level that’s comparable to that of the best international law offices around the world. Clients can thereby count on receiving top quality legal services in every jurisdiction where they work with Kinstellar, and on being able to communicate exclusively with a lawyer with whom they’ve already established a relationship in their country of origin, and who will then internally organise the servicing of the client in all jurisdictions required.
Could the bringing together of the two firms’ legal experts result in a deeper understanding of market perspectives and the building of a new business culture?
We expect the integration to lead to us working on significantly more complex, high-profile, cross-border transactions, and to us positioning ourselves as one of the key law firms dealing with commercial law in Serbia.
We expect to position ourselves as one of the key law firms dealing with commercial law in Serbia
Kinstellar invests significant resources in specialised training and development for employees at all levels, and in so doing strives always to attract top professionals. Kinstellar also has an active associate exchange programme between its offices, which brings new experiences to lawyers and deepens their international perspective. We believe this will help us entice the most talented young people to join our team.
This merger makes you the largest integrated law firm in the region. What do the numbers say?
instellar has been present in Serbia since 2010, via cooperation with the Joint Law Office Marić, which has joined forces with SOG in its full composition. SOG in cooperation with Kinstellar has formed a team of 45 people and become equivalent in terms of strength to Kinstellar’s large offices in Budapest, Sofia and Bucharest. We will work on the synergy of these four offices – together with the Žurić and Partners law firm from Croatia – taking a dominant role on the legal services market in the region of Southeast Europe. Although firms often join forces to form regional networks, Kinstellar differs in this sense in the fact that we really operate as a single team, and we consider that this gives us a huge comparative advantage over the competition.