“It’s the same in Estonia as everywhere else,” says Kristel Raidla-Talur, Partner and Co-Chair of the Banking & Finance practice group at Cobalt Estonia. “The virus is dictating our professional and personal activities.”
“In general the situation is not too bad,” she says. “It appears that the measures instituted by the government have been sufficient, and the medical system appears not to be overwhelmed, so at the moment it appears not to be the worst case.” In fact, she reports, “although we also have had an emergency declaration, we do not have a complete lockdown — people can still move, but no more than two people, unless they’re in a family. But of course shopping centers have closed, and those who can are working remotely.”
Cobalt Estonia’s office is still open, with a skeleton crew of assistants taking phone calls and accepting deliveries and occasional lawyers stopping in here and there “in case they need a couple of hours of private time away from noisy kids and things.” Still, Raidla-Talur says, “it’s very quiet there.” In general, she says with a smile, “everyone here is relying on Zoom as everywhere else — lots of Zoom calls both with clients and internally.” But then she sighs. “It’s the new reality, and probably it’s not for a short period of time. But at the moment we’re managing quite well.”
“Of course our business has also been impacted,” Raidla-Talur says, noting that some practices have been affected more than others. “We see that some M&A deals have been postponed or canceled, so it seems a little more quiet on that front, compared to a few months ago, but on the other hand we also have new legal issues — various non-performance matters and force majeure invocations, and so on.” According to her, “our restructuring team is quite busy, as some businesses, among them a major shopping center and a retailer operating several fashion brands, have initiated reorganizations and things like that.” Overall, she says, “the situation is not dramatic, but of course different practice groups have different experiences. Some have new types of work coming, and some of them have more down time. Overall we are in good shape, at least for now.”
Indeed, she reports, her own practice group — Banking & Finance — “has been one of the busiest in the firm for a long time already, and this has not changed. We are working on financing deals, capital markets matters, venture capital transactions, financial regulatory matters, licensing matters, and our people are very busy.” She smiles. “Fingers crossed. Our people need some rest but hopefully it does not get too quiet.”
And so far, at least, Cobalt hasn’t formally reorganized the practice groups or transferred lawyers from one to another. “We haven’t done anything formal in terms of practice group reorganizations,” Raidla-Talur says, “but we have encouraged everyone to pick up kinds of work that may be in demand. People have adapted and picked up quite nicely. Especially a lot of clients whose needs don’t fit into specific practice areas — they just need a good lawyer.” Still, she concedes, “down the road we’ll have to see if things worsen, or if the recession lasts for a long time. For now the partners have all agreed that it is important to keep the team and keep them happy.”
The crisis brought an abrupt change to what had been an encouraging first few months of 2020, Raidla-Talur reports. “We expected this to be a good year,” she says, “but of course we were a little bit concerned because even before the virus hit there was discussion and evidence about the economy cooling down. We hadn’t seen that yet to a significant extent, but we were considering that it could happen.” Still, she points out, “but of course none of us could foresee this happening. This made it happen really quickly.” Still, she insists, “ there is no reason to panic or be overly pessimistic. We are realistic optimists.”
