Some European businesses may suffer from the sanctions, but the legal business certainly won’t.
Specifically to challenge the sanctions and defend itself against them, the state-owned company Rosneft is buying 37,000 hours of work from English lawyers, for which it will pay £17.7 million.
That puts the hourly rate at £478.
The law firm must be British:
Converted into rubles at the current exchange rate (64.7 rubles to the pound), Rosneft will pay 1.1 billion rubles for its legal fight against the sanctions, or 29,700 rubles for every hour of work.
Rates like these always give Russian lawyers a nervous tic, but good Western lawyers ~~are exactly this good at fleecing their clients~~ really do cost that much.
But here’s the more interesting part: Rosneft is conducting this procurement as a “single-supplier purchase.”
Let’s be blunt: the legal services market in Britain is so competitive, and the state of that market is such, that for a £17.7 million contract, people in suits with briefcases would be ready to dance the “Mamushka” dance right in front of the Russian Embassy.
Especially since the main difficulty in carrying out this contract will be an ethical dilemma: whether to bill those Russian idiots £500 an hour for the 45 minutes the firm’s partners spent mocking the latest episode of Suits. Because the coffee breaks, the post-lunch nap, and escorting Igor Sechin’s relatives around Covent Garden have already been billed.
The name of the lucky “winner” has not appeared yet, but it should soon. You can view the procurement here.
P.S. Don’t forget to vote for the bill introducing criminal liability for illicit enrichment. That one is free.