In the early 2000s, the future founding partners of Pen & Paper joined forces on a specialized anti-corporate raiding project, successfully defending the interests and assets of Ilim Pulp Enterprise CJSC—Russia and Eastern Europe’s largest timber industry corporation—in a dispute with the Basic Element company.

Amid the wave of corporate raiding that swept across Russia in the early 2000s, the future founders and attorneys of Pen & Paper repelled dozens of hostile takeover attempts and raiding attacks, thereby developing the expertise in resolving acute corporate conflicts that would prove pivotal to their future practice.

In the early 2010s, Pen & Paper attorneys represented the shareholders of Lenta—one of Russia’s largest retail chains—in a corporate dispute involving VTB Bank and the US-based fund TPG. The matter culminated in what was, at the time, the largest sale-and-purchase transaction in the history of Russian retail.

During this same period, the firm’s Senior Partner, Konstantin Dobrynin, became a senator representing the executive branch of the Arkhangelsk Region and served as Deputy Chairman of the Federation Council Committee on Constitutional Legislation and State Building. He continued to champion the interests of citizens in his capacity as a senator until leaving public service in 2015. Concurrently, Pen & Paper attorneys regularly put forward initiatives aimed at improving existing legislation and law enforcement practices.

Since the mid-2010s, the Pen & Paper team has been actively involved in expert and legislative work; notably, they developed a training course on combating corporate raiding—approved by the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation—and worked on the federal law that introduced a detainee's right to a phone call into Russian legislation, thereby establishing a Russian equivalent to one of the legal safeguards associated with the American "Miranda rule."

The late 2010s marked a new phase in Pen & Paper’s development: the firm welcomed new partners, including Vadim Klyuvgant, who became co-head of the criminal law practice; Ekaterina Tyagay, who founded and led the Sensitive Matters practice; and Sergey Uchitel, who took on the role of head of the Dispute Resolution practice in Moscow. Expanding the partnership team not only strengthened the firm’s core expertise in criminal and corporate law but also enabled the development of practice areas that were new to both Pen & Paper and the Russian legal market—specifically, complex international family and inheritance disputes involving high-net-worth individuals.


A natural progression of this growth was the opening of a London representative office and the formation of a strategic alliance with Bivonas Law, a leading London firm specializing in misconduct by officials, white-collar crime, and commercial litigation.


Since the late 2010s, Pen & Paper has consistently featured in national and international legal rankings, including Chambers and Best Lawyers, as well as in the independent, annually peer-reviewed ranking published by Russia’s oldest newspaper.

For many consecutive years, Pen & Paper has remained one of the top teams in the fields of criminal law, corporate dispute resolution, compliance, family and inheritance law, and M&A. In 2024 and 2025, *Kommersant* continues to recommend the majority of the firm’s practice areas, as well as individual partners recognized as leaders in the Russian legal market; our key achievements are highlighted by top-tier (Band 1) rankings across various practice categories.


Even amidst the withdrawal of international businesses and capital from Russia, Pen & Paper continues to handle major cross-border and domestic disputes, protecting clients' interests worldwide and maintaining its reputation as a reliable partner for complex, multi-jurisdictional projects. We take pride in our past while looking toward the future with keen interest and enthusiasm.