Rzeczpospolita ranking

PMR team

June 10, 2019

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More than 2.5 million proceedings in 2018, including more than one million completed, are collectively accounted for by all law firms that entered a new category in our ranking. Law firms taking part in the ranking, for the first time, were able to choose whether they wanted to compete with other numbers of lawyers or whether they preferred to take part in one of the two classifications, which did not require qualified lawyers at all.

The first was for law firms or companies providing direct legal services. We wanted to recognise them for their modern approach to the mass provision of legal services. However, only one firm - AVAILO - sent in an application and we had to drop this part of the ranking. We hope to do it again next year.

Eleven to start

The second classification, intended for law firms or companies that have one leading area of legal services in their activity, e.g. compensation, debt collection, restructuring activities, attracted more interested parties. Eleven companies, mainly debt collection law firms, returned our surveys. However, there are also four companies specializing in restructuring and bankruptcy and one compensation law firm.

The place in the ranking is determined by the number of clients and the number of completed proceedings. Two law firms stood out.

The leader in the number of completed proceedings is the law firm Raven from Wrocław, which specialises in providing comprehensive support for court and enforcement proceedings throughout the country. It must be admitted that the scale of this activity is enormous. In 2018, it handled as many as 2,165,000 proceedings, of which it completed over 1 million. Raven operates exclusively for the debt collection process of the Kruk SA Group and its partners - a total of just 67 clients. Instead, it employs an impressive number of staff - 604, 166 of whom are lawyers.

In the number of clients, another Wrocław firm - A. Łebek i Wspólnicy, one of the largest compensation law firms - holds the first place. In 2018, it served 10,846 individuals, primarily those injured in traffic accidents. It handled 10,500 proceedings, of which more than 4,300 were completed. There are 95 lawyers working for the firm, with a total team of 108.

Companies involved in restructuring and bankruptcy do not have such spectacular quantitative achievements yet. 1,435 proceedings in 2018, including 304 completed, is the best result given by a restructuring law firm in the ranking (although these numbers do not apply exclusively to bankruptcy proceedings). It belongs to the Warsaw law firm Woźnicki Malecha Krzemiński Noga. It served 525 clients last year.

Time is money

- Market consumer bankruptcy is only just developing in Poland, because until 2015, every debtor who wanted to get rid of debt had to prove that they were able to cover the costs of the proceedings. Few consumers could afford it. Now the regulations are not as restrictive. The effect of the relaxation is a dynamic increase in cases about consumer bankruptcy. In 2016, there were 1,478 (8,649 applications submitted), a year later there were 5,558 (11,120 applications). I suppose that we will quite quickly reach a level proportional to Germany, where about 70,000 applications submitted annually lead to the announcement of over 35,000. consumer bankruptcies – says Marek Malecha, attorney, trustee and restructuring advisor from the Woźnicki Malecha Krzemiński Noga law firm.

Ranking results