Warsaw law firm plans to continue building ranks
Wierzbowski & Szubielska, the "correspondent law firm" of accounting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers, is set to go out again on a recruitment spree on the heels of pulling two partners away from competitor Arthur Andersen's legal outlet.
Formerly Wierzbowski & Co., the Warsaw law firm has gone from one to 45 lawyers in the space of a few years. Industry members, and the firm's competitors, question whether Wierzbowski's firm might soon suffer from uncontrolled growth.
"Our people are very busy," said Krzysztof Wierzbowski, managing partner and the firm's founder. "For us that's the best proof. There's enough work for us."
In a matter of months the company will recruit a few more lawyers, he said, although refusing to further specify a number and timeline for staff additions. This month the firm changed its nameplate, when tax and administrative legal heavyweight Dorota Szubielska and civil and commercial law specialist Tomasz Gromek crossed over from G. Domanski, D. Szubielska i Wspolnicy. Both had been founders and partners of Arthur Andersen's "limited partner" and brought with them the majority of the 15 new staff members that have joined the firm this year, Wierzbowski said.
In Poland, accounting and consultancy firms have been barred from offering legal services, prompting a flurry of activity last year among the Big Five firms to find local partners. Wierzbowski said that his firm was not actively poaching staff from its rivals. "We are not hunting for people, we are doing our job and people are ready to join us," he said. "We selected very carefully, we've rejected hundreds, many hundreds of candidates."
Arthur Andersen is not the only Big Five firm that has lost out to Wierzbowski: former head of legal services at KPMG, Lech Zyzylewski, defected earlier this year. Other lawyers have joined the company from Wierzbowski's old employers Baker & McKenzie and White & Case. Wierzbowski said that he saw international law firms as his company's main competitors. "We are successful from winning the work from them and winning people from them," Wierzbowski said.
Lawyers often bring existing clients to their new posts. But Wierzbowski would not detail which new clients the company had acquired with the recent moves. According to a recent WBJ survey, the firm said that customers included PTK Centertel, Siemens, Hamburgerische Landesbank, Steen & Strom, Tate & Lyle and AB Volvo.
Wierzbowski is betting on growth in banking and finance, IT, intellectual property, communications, and mergers and acquisitions to fuel his expansion strategy. Developments in technological and industries catching up with their peers abroad and European Union (EU) accession will provide a ton of work, he said.
It is natural that law firms will grow, he said, and the most successful will be those offering specific areas of expertise. "High rates will not be paid to general practitioners but to real experts," Wierzbowski said. "So legal firms with more experts in specific fields of law, that's the direction."
Wierzbowski & Szubielska will also expand outside Warsaw, but when and where remain questions. "It's inevitable," Wierzbowski said. "It's a question of timing."
