The listing «30 most successful lawyers of Ukraine» was published in Focus Journal telling about each representative of the Ukrainian Bar as well as about their most significant cases.  

 

The first selection criteria of Focus Journal were a valid license to practice law and obligatory legal practice. Eighty lawyers were selected according to them, of which 30 were subsequently chosen.

The most successful lawyers were  determined by Focus on the basis of expert evaluation, which were given to each aspirant by his/her collaterals, the Bar Association of Ukraine. Moreover, it was the first time that judges could express their opinion. In the appraisal six criteria were applied, in particular understanding of client’s interests and offering of effective methods for problem solution; developing of an effective (variational, creative) strategy in order to protect the interests; the quality of procedural document preparation; case administration tactics / presentation in court; lawyer’s moral and ethic qualities as well as professional mediation (the ability to convince the opponent of concluding a peaceful agreement). The experts gave points to each participant under a 5-point scale, with 5 being the highest mark.

 

There were 13 judges participating in the evaluation procedure, whose opinion was especially valuable. In fact, they are those in front of whom the listing participants must put the advantages of their clients’ cases in a favorable light and deflect their attention from respective disadvantages. In some cases, the judges were unanimous in their ratings, in others they had divergent opinions. Having collected the work sheets of all experts, the editorial board chose 30 best on the basis of the total score. However, Focus considers positional ranking of lawyers improper, as the cases they have to deal with are too different. That was the reason why the lawyers were listed alphabetically.

 

On the shortlist lawyers with 20 years experience were represented along with the young generation of professionals, who easily took up the new spheres of right which didn’t even exist 20 years ago. For instance, antimonopoly, tax, and international commercial right.