Who Is Afraid Of An Independent Lawyer And Self-Governed Legal Profession?

A member of the working group of the Judicial Reform Council, member of the Board of the Ukrainian Bar Association, Leader of the “Tomorrow’s Lawyer” Program and a Honored Lawyer of Ukraine Andriy Vyshnevsky, contributed an article on the course and the state of work on the new draft Law of Ukraine “On the Bar and Legal Profession” to the newspaper “Yuridicheskaya Gazeta”.

A loud scandal brought by the leadership of the National Ukrainian Bar Association as the result of  public presentation of the Report on the results of an assessment of the needs of lawyers’ self-government in Ukraine, prepared on the instructions of the Council of Europe by international experts Rytis Jokubauskas and Ranko Pelitsarich at the end of last year, has left no doubt that conservative methods of treating Ukrainian Bar can no longer save it, and therefore, urgent surgery is required to cure the bodies of national self-government.

Obviously, recovery is not possible until each lawyer receives the right to personally participate in the work of higher (representative in nature) local self-government bodies (conferences of advocates of the region), and the work of executive bodies, which by its nature are the Bar Council of Ukraine and the Bar Councils of the regions will be completely subordinated to the Congress of Advocates of Ukraine and the conferences of advocates of the regions.

At the same time, the possibility of convening the conferences of lawyers of the regions in no way should depend on the will of the Bar Council of Ukraine, as it is today. The agenda of congresses and conferences, any changes to them, as well as information on candidates for all organs of the Bar, must be made public in advance and accessible for examination.

These ideas, simple and vital for true self-government in the legal profession, are embodied in the new draft Law of Ukraine “On the Bar and Legal Profession”. It is these ideas that are objectively in the interests of each lawyer (because their implementation affects the degree of independence of the lawyer), cause the greatest resistance of officials from the legal self-government.

Read more in the Yurydychna Gazeta.