Built by the clients we used to be.

SOVA is a law firm in the United Arab Emirates, advising companies and their owners across the Gulf.

The firm was founded in 2022 by Alexey Myagchenkov and Julia Tokareva, after long careers inside the kinds of businesses SOVA now advises. Alexey ran legal and compliance for a global luxury e-commerce group across the Middle East, through a New York listing and one of the region's larger retail joint ventures; before that he was legal director on a resort development of approximately USD 2.8bn. Julia spent fifteen years in senior commercial roles at an international fashion platform, a major technology group and a global brewing business, and has built and sold her own brands.

We have received advice for most of our careers. It is why ours reads the way it does.

What we do

We advise companies and the people who own them on corporate structures, transactions, disputes and regulatory risk — onshore in the UAE, in the free zones, and in the common-law jurisdictions of DIFC and ADGM. Our work is cross-border by default: a holding structure in one jurisdiction, an operating business in another, an investor in a third, and a counterparty who has never encountered any of them.

Because SOVA is licensed as legal consultants and corporate service providers, we can take a structure from recommendation through to registered, licensed and banked reality — and maintain it afterwards. Clients who have worked with both a law firm and a corporate services provider will recognise how much friction that removes.

How engagements run

Every engagement begins with a conversation and a scope in writing. Where the scope is clear we quote a fixed or capped fee; where it cannot be, we work hourly and invoice monthly, with the running position visible to you at any time. Engagements are taken on under signed terms of business, and nothing on this site or in an enquiry creates one by itself.

Three rules have held since the first mandate: plain language, the essential point first, and no document longer than its job requires.

The bench

Around the founding partners sits a group of senior specialists — legal, compliance, people and finance — who work with SOVA on integrated mandates, and a small circle of collaborating firms. Tax is delivered together with Willow Tax & Legal. Where a matter requires rights of audience before the onshore courts, we work alongside licensed advocates while holding the strategy together.