After five years of service as an Estonian Supreme Court justice, Urmas Volens, one of the co-founders of law firm NOVE, is rejoining the firm’s team.
At NOVE, Urmas will focus on real estate transactions, including matters related to the sale and acquisition of real estate, as well as on property law, corporate law, and the law of obligations. He will also advise on Government Relations, Policy Development, Research.
According to Kristjan Tamm, a co-founder of the firm, the entire team is delighted to welcome Urmas Volens back to NOVE: “Urmas is one of NOVE’s founders and has made a significant contribution to the firm’s development. He is one of Estonia’s leading experts in private law, with long-standing professional experience as a public official, attorney-at-law, lecturer in law, and Supreme Court justice. His return brings a strong addition to NOVE’s expertise.”
Urmas Volens views this new chapter as a return to his roots: “Returning to NOVE is a great opportunity for me to focus on the fields of law where I am strongest: property law and real estate, contracts, and corporate law.” He adds: “I hope that my knowledge and experience will help further develop NOVE’s real estate law practice and contribute to the growth of Estonia’s best law firm and the strengthening of its team.”
Kristjan Tamm explains that Urmas’s arrival will enable NOVE to provide clients with even higher-quality services by channeling various business and real estate law advisory services into more highly specialized teams. “NOVE has a strong and internationally recognized mergers and acquisitions (M&A) practice, which has been led for the past four years and will continue to be led by Laura Raadik. Alongside this, a separate real estate transactions team with a distinct focus will be established under Urmas’s leadership,” Tamm explained. Kristjan Tamm will continue to lead one of Estonia’s most highly regarded construction law practices.
As a Supreme Court justice, Urmas Volens also served as Chair of the Civil Chamber and was a member of the Constitutional Review Chamber for four years.
During his tenure at the Estonian Ministry of Justice from 1998 to 2009 in various positions, Urmas participated in the drafting of all major private law statutes, including the Property Law Act, Law of Obligations Act, Land Register Act, Succession Act, Employment Contracts Act, and the Code of Civil Procedure, as well as in amendments to the Commercial Code, the Personal Data Protection Act, the Restructuring Act, and others, and in the parliamentary proceedings related to these laws in the Riigikogu – the parliament of Estonia.
Founded in 2016, NOVE is a law firm that initially specialized in dispute resolution. In recent years, the firm has undergone significant growth, during which several leading specialists in their respective fields have joined the firm, resulting in a substantial expansion of NOVE’s areas of practice. In Äripäev’s 2024 ranking of Estonian law firms, NOVE placed top third.
