“Only ethical and courageous leaders are brave enough to go that one step beyond and face new market challenges.
No pioneering businesses are built on the foundation of imitating others.”
- Colibri’s founding partners.
When we formed our team in 2003, we knew that it would not be a conventional law firm. Indeed, we never intended to become one.
When we became a single partnership in 2011, we adopted the unusual name "Colibri", which means hummingbird in numerous languages. It encapsulated the spirit of the firm at that time: small yet powerful, energised and ready to explore the Great Unknown. From the very beginning, we always delivered innovative products, tried to go above and beyond, and do meaningful work with the limited resources we had.
We have pioneered the legal market by introducing products that no one else had thought of, such as our weekly business intelligence overview, SYNOPTIC (a knowledge management tool), HIVE (a process-based project management tool), and GIDRA (Global Intelligence for Development Research and Analysis - our in-house market research and analysis group). We get excited about creating products and services that others may think are too adventurous or unusual. On our website we explain that we set goals we know we cannot attain now, with the intention of striving to reach them in the future. This is the firm’s core ethos.
Law firms in our region have been present on market for decades, and some of them have indeed attained the highest levels of excellence and renown. We respect and admire their professionalism and, above all, their exceptional ethics. However, in a continually changing world success comes to pioneers, and businesses succeed not by measuring themselves against their competitors, but rather by making quantum leaps and adding completely unique and game-changing value to the market. This is precisely when competition becomes irrelevant.
Most people would consider an innovative approach to be challenging and risky. And they would be right. It takes tremendous effort to run a pan-regional firm whilst also maintaining growth. We discussed our future strategies for a long time, until we finally realised that all this time we have in fact had a strategy. It was simply an unspoken one. Each of our twelve partners genuinely believes that the only way to compete is to stop competing, and this can only be attained by delivering professional excellence together with valuable innovation. In today’s world, no one can win by delivering the same betterness.
The firm operates well today. We have recently launched an office in Iran, which represents the second such international expansion since the firm's inception. In line with the firm's spirit, this bold move is one that most firms would not dare to make. We have an excellent client portfolio and our sophisticated business processes ensure the firm's smooth operation. Some of the best legal experts have joined the firm recently, and we continue to search for talented local legal professionals. Indeed, many talented graduates strive to become part of the firm. Our internationally respected partners are frequently invited to speak at top-tier events, and our British UK/USA representative continues to raise the firm's profile and act as an on-the-ground point of contact for our many international clients and partners.
We are in the heart of the New Silk Road and have the great fortune of witnessing significant tectonic shifts in the history of our region's frontier markets. As such, we believe that we can and should strive to push ourselves and the markets within which we work further. Entering maturity requires a fully formed and cohesive strategy, and ours sees us challenging ourselves to play two paradoxical roles simultaneously: the role of the creator and the role of the destroyer, because there is beauty in creative and constructive destruction. It is for this reason that we are now undergoing a corporate metamorphosis that involves a complete rebranding: we are creating a new company called CENTIL.
Firstly, it is a shortened version of the word centillion, an unfathomably huge number with six hundred zeros. Astrophysicists say that this is the size of twelve parallel universes. What else could better reflect the endless opportunities that innovative businesses have? Secondly, it is an anagram for another word, which denotes the most important element of our business: CLIENT.
From an organisational point of view, CENTIL is a new holding enterprise that will consume all of Colibri’s business. Colibri will remain our registered trademark for all the Central Asian countries within which we operate, but our entire business, including legal consulting, will now be run under the new name. The rebranding process will be implemented over a period of 12 months, with CENTIL replacing Colibri in all of our engagements. No HR or project management changes will be introduced, and all the firm's partners and associates will of course remain on board.
CENTIL is the embodiment of an advanced strategy aimed at providing unique value by combining a classic legal practice with the cutting-edge market research and analytics services delivered by GIDRA – the firm’s in-house project management and research department. With this strategic move, we intend to increase our market integration and expand upon the key role we have already come to play in the very early stages of business planning processes, when investors are merely scoping out our frontier markets.
We are also developing a range of new products to meet our clients' wider needs, including a knowledge management database that incorporates artificial intelligence. Once this is completed, we intend to make it available to top law schools free of charge. Another product involves constructing blockchain-based smart contracts. We are looking beyond the boundaries local law firms have traditionally been confined by. After all, we work within a huge and beautiful world!
For those of us who were here for the firm’s inception over a decade ago, this is another inspiring chapter in our lives. We liked the name Colibri (just look at our doodles alone!), and although the name conveyed the firm’s character all those years ago, the time has come to evolve and advance. Indeed, we like the name CENTIL even more because it represents the two most important elements of our DNA – infinite opportunity and our core focus on the client.
And, of course, we are still getting used to the new name too!
For more information about the rebranding process or to ask any questions regarding CENTIL, please contact our Marketing and Press department (Zosia Demkowicz - zosia.d@centil.law).