Zhaniya B. Ussen is the Managing partner at Assistance Law Firm, which is the oldest private law firm in Kazakhstan established in 1988 and providing the full range of legal services to local and foreign companies in Kazakhstan. She has a JD from the Moscow State University School of Law, the leading institution in legal studies in all Soviet and post-Soviet areas (1992), and a Master of Laws degree with honors from the Northwestern University School of Law in the United States (1995). Following graduation from Northwestern, Zhaniya was admitted to practice as an Attorney and Counsellor-at-Law in the courts of the State of New York and became the first Kazakhstani lawyer to achieve this distinction (1996). She spent over 25 years working as an attorney in Almaty, Moscow, and New York and has been heavily involved in various commercial transactions in CIS with a focus on foreign investments to Kazakhstan.