International firms have, in the past, enjoyed a lucrative standing in the Russian and Ukrainian legal markets, but Kelly Parsons explains how the recession has helped local firms flourish

The ongoing turf war between Russia's independent and foreign law firms moved up a gear in 2009.

Local lawyers, long resigned to sharing their market with the crowd of international firms that began arriving in droves at the end of the Soviet era, regained a little of that lost ground thanks to the economic downturn.