Monday, January 31, 2011

Big Changes Afoot in Regulation of Lawyers in Russia

Last week, Vedomosti published an interview with Russian Deputy Minister of Justice Yuri Lyubimov, one of whose responsibilities includes supervision of the legal profession in Russia. According to the interview, profound changes are on the horizon for all legal professionals in Russia - including both "yuristy" and "advokaty." Currently, "advokaty" are highly regulated but represent a relatively small segment of the legal market in commercial matters. In contrast, "yuristy," including in-house lawyers and virtually all professionals employed by major Russian and international law firms in Russia, require no license whatsoever to practice law. Mr. Lyubimov states that the main parameters of the new reform are virtually certain and that they will involve a unification of both categories of lawyers into a single category of licensed practitioners (with possible sub-categories for specializations in criminal, civil and commercial law). He emphasizes that while nominally this may appear to be a move favoring Russian lawyers and "advokaty" especially, the intention is for the transition to be minimally disruptive to the exising legal market, while ensuring a uniform minimum quality standard for the profession.

http://www.vedomosti.ru/newspaper/article/2011/01/27/253884 (Vedomosti, 27 January 2011)

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