Legal business geography in Russia: regional analysis and mapping using tax service open data

DOI: 10.35595/2414-9179-2024-1-30-54-65

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About the Author

Pavel O. Syomin

Perm State University, Department of Social and Economic Geography,
15, Bukireva str., Perm, 614068, Russia,
E-mail: ntsp@ya.ru

Abstract

This paper presents an exploratory regional analysis of legal business in Russia over the period from 2016 to 2021. The primary data source for the analysis is the Federal Tax Service (FTS) open data on small and medium-sized businesses and the number of employees of organizations. The paper proposes a reproducible methodology of working with FTS open data for regional analysis in service geography that was partially implemented in a specially designed Python command line tool. The analysis includes questions regarding the number of law firms and their employees by region, the proportion of organizations engaged in the regional legal business, the role of regions in the country’s legal business sector, the role of legal business in the regions’ economies, and the change in the number of law firms in regions over the observed period. Additionally, it briefly addresses the potential correlation between the location of district-level courts and the development of legal business. The analysis revealed that the legal business sector in Russia is highly concentrated in Moscow and St. Petersburg. These regions also occupy the top position in terms of the role of legal business within the region. However, there are other regions with relatively high levels of legal business development, which are primarily located in the European south of Russia, the Volga-Urals, and Siberia. A dichotomy emerges between regions where legal business is dominated by organizations and those where individual entrepreneurs prevail over companies. District courts are typically situated in regions with a high level of legal business development. However, the underlying mechanism of this co-location requires further investigation. The number of legal firms increased from 2016 to 2021 in the majority of regions. The year-by-year changes within the regions typically follow an inverted U-shaped pattern. This pattern is likely explained by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, which negatively impacted small and medium businesses and reversed the initial growth trend.

Keywords

regional analysis, geography of services, legal services, legal business, open data

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For citation: Syomin P.O. Legal business geography in Russia: regional analysis and mapping using tax service open data. InterCarto. InterGIS. Moscow: MSU, Faculty of Geography, 2024. V. 30. Part 1. P. 54–65. DOI: 10.35595/2414-9179-2024-1-30-54-65