CONFERENCE ‘TOMORROW`S LAWYER’: A FUTURISTIC VIEW OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION
‘If we don’t create this moral foundation, if we don’t win this war for morality, the whole state will lose’
Sviatoslav Vakarchuk
On 8 February 2019, Kyiv hosted the Third Annual Conference of the ‘Tomorrow’s Lawyer’ Programme alumni and participants entitled: ‘Legal profession. A futuristic view’. The event was held with the support of the Bureau of Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) of the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv.
The conference was timed to coincide with the start of the third season of the Future Lawyer Programme – during the year, a hundred participants selected on a competitive basis will improve their soft skills and form a new generation of agents of change in society.
Andriy Vyshnevsky, Head of the Tomorrow’s Lawyer Programme, reminded that the Programme is not only about trainings, but, above all, a unique platform for professional communication and networking. According to him, the Programme is an incubator for fostering a qualitatively new generation of lawyers for whom the rule of law, ethics and fair justice are the highest values.
‘We believe in the power of law and we believe that the quality of the legal profession, the quality of the legal community, can either be a factor in restraining reforms or a factor in accelerating them. Unfortunately, recent trends in Ukrainian justice do not give us much optimism that the legal community has already become a driver of change. That is why we have been implementing the ‘’Tomorrow’s Lawyer‘’ Programme for the third year in a row and hope to continue its implementation in the future,’ said Andriy Vyshnevsky at the opening of the event.
Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, US Ambassador to Ukraine, also expressed her admiration for the Programme and its values. ‘We are proud to participate in the Programme, because we believe that all of you reflect the name of the Programme, you are the future of the legal profession in Ukraine. The role of the lawyer is fundamental in all socially significant phenomena, whether it is the development of new laws or defence in court. That is why lawyers should be endowed with all the qualities that will help them to perform their important function to the best of their ability.
The Ambassador expressed her hope that participation in the Programme will enrich the participants with critical skills that are not currently taught in higher education institutions at law faculties. It is about effective communication – not only within the community, but also with clients and the general public who may not understand complex legal principles and categories, as well as with the media at a time when social media is becoming a powerful platform for communication.
The other side of communication is the skill of the written word. According to J.V. Marie Jovanovic, accuracy and persuasiveness in writing are one of the keys to a lawyer’s success. Finally, the third pillar of the Programme is ethics. ‘If we only had to choose between good and evil, black and white, life would be much simpler. Ethics is a guideline that teaches us to make difficult decisions that are in the grey area,’ she states.
The keynote speech of the conference was delivered by Wilfried de Wever, CEO of Humanity Solutions (the Netherlands). He spoke about the future of the profession, the new skills required for the development of legal practice and the new opportunities that are opening up for lawyers in the global context. For more information, please follow the link.
During the panel discussion, in which Mr Wilfrid joined, lawyers argued that in the future ‘only those in love will survive’. Representatives of Bot & Partners Andriy Udovychenko and Mykyta Pidhainyi, HiiL representative in Ukraine Dmytro Foremnyi, Counsel and Head of Intellectual Property Practice at Vasil Kisil & Partners Ilarion Tomarov, together with moderator Dmytro Gadomskyi, CEO of Axon Partners, shared their vision of the future of the legal profession.
The discussion issues included: the concept of ‘juridical’ and its harm to the profession; useful tools that lawyers do not use; coding skills and promotion of personal brand, understanding of the beauty in design and the profession of the future – here the participants swung as far as 2049. The most useful tips from the panel are already being prepared for your attention.
The mystery guest at the end of the conference was te famous singer and public figure Svyatoslav Vakarchuk, whose conversation session was moderated by Svitlana Matvienko, Director of the Ukrainian School of Political Studies.
Sviatoslav looked into the future of justice: ‘Justice is more than common sense,’ the guest spoke about the importance of change and willingness to make decisions. ’Without morality, you can justify everything. That is why it is important to fight for morality and values.’
According to him, in most developed countries, representatives of the legal profession are associated with the notion of a national elite that guards public morality. Attorneys in Ukraine can become the basis of such an elite, based on successful examples in world history, in particular, the history of the United States of America.
‘If we don’t create this moral foundation, if we don’t win this war for morality, the whole country will lose,’ said Vakarchuk.
The “Tomorrow’s Lawyer” Program was launched in 2016 and first implemented within the “Quality and Accessible Legal Aid” Project, carried out by the Canadian Bureau for International Education with the support of the Government of Canada in cooperation with the Legal Aid Coordination Centre. It is currently being implemented and developed with the support of the US Embassy’s Law Enforcement Section in Ukraine, the “Tomorrow’s Lawyer” NGO, in partnership with the Ukrainian Bar Association and the Bar Association of Legal Aid Providers.
