Role of advocate in Polish and Ukrainian Legal Systems

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Essay “ Role of advocate in Polish and Ukrainian Legal Systems”

By Alona Dubar

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Everybody knows what is trial. There a lot of people who involved in this process. Of, course main role in court plays judge but I want to illustrate also very important figure in the court it is a position of an advocate.

Advocate is very old profession. It was started in ancient Greece. At that time there was not profession such as “lawyer”. Advocates did not earned money for their help and there was not some pops and circumstances as we have now. And law was ignored by everybody but later when there were some cases in which people needed help of person who can protect their rights ( lawyer ) they asked their friends who could help for the assistance. Later there were enrolled some rules and after some years there appeared advocates as a profession.

Nowdays advocates is an important person because he or she state rights of his or her client. It is very hard to protect yourself in the court without advocate or person who specialized in law because advocates ask questions to the participants of process, field complains and protests against actions of prosecutor and court, can use all the statutory ways and means to determine the circumstances refute the suspicion or accusation or mitigating. Vaskovskiy E.V., “Organizatsiya advocatory” p.203

It is very important to be a professional in your job because clients of yours rely on you, they asked for your help and you have to protect them or give a piece of advice. There are some “black lines” in our life which demanded help of advocates and that is why services of lawyers have to be available for everybody. There is a special role refers to the advocate in every legal state.

I want to compare two legislative countries: Poland and Ukraine, in order to illustrate differences and commons in advocate role in this two countries.

First country in which I want to describe role of advocate is Poland.

In Polish legal System advocate play a significant role. According to the Advocates Ethic in Poland , advocates main point is to protect interests if his or her client and that should do that due to their knowledges, advocates should states all ethics norms and maintain dignity of their profession, in case when advocate of Poland working abroad he or she should states norms of country where advocate represents his or her client. In Poland advocate can represent client in all kinds of cases, especially in criminal, civil, corporate law.

To become an advocate in Poland person should chose a university where he or she can study law. In the university student should study for a five years. After finishing university course student who wants to became an advocates cannot start their work. Before they start their future career as an independent lawyers they have to work as an advocate assistant for about three years. During this time probationer has to pass exam and in the end of advocate's assistant work he or she should pass the most important examination. After that person would be add to a Bar Association and can start his or her career as an independent lawyer. Bar Association it is a professional body for lawyers. It was organized to deal with issues affecting the legal profession and all advocates have to be in this association. If person has convictions he or she cannot be an advocate. In case when advocate committed crime while he or she member of Bar Association, it can exclude that person from Association and this person cannot work as an advocate never again. Advocate can represent his or her client in any types of courts. However, in Poland there three of them:

· S№d Okrкgowy (the District Court);

· S№d Apelacyjny (Court of Appeal);

· S№d Najwyїszy(The Supreme Court);

I would like to tell about famous case in Poland, it is Pruszkow case. Pruszkow is famous gang in Poland. They were famous by exploding bombs and stealing cars, robbed, organized crimes. They have caused a lot of damage to society. The trial about this case was lasted for six years. There were almost forty accused. The leader of this gang was Janusz P. when he was caught by the police he was convicted to spent one year and a half in prison and about ten members of Pruszkow gang were found innocent. Only one member of the gung has got 8 years imprisonment. Those guys were committing crimes and as a result that were not punished as it should be. In my opinion role of an advocate in this case was significant. Their advocates have represented them so well so some of them were justified . A lot of people were not satisfied with such judge decision, they think that it was not a fair sentence.

One more case that I want to illustrate is Katarzyna Waњniewska case. 22 years old Katarzyna was accused in murderer of her 6 month child. There was a great scandal about it. Mother of a child said that it fall down on floor and died but a lot of people do not believe that. Some doctors after expertise informed that child had hit in back part of the head, some experts claims that even if child fall her mother killed her after that. After long procedure of finding evidence for make mother of 6 month old guilty Katarzyna Waњniewska was putted to jail. But after period less than one month she was free because there was not enough evidence to make her guilty. “Madzia Wasniewska”, 2012 February 6, www.huffingtonpost.com Nowdays she enjoy her freedom but it is hard to live for her because she if haunted by reports because there are some thing with are not clear and everybody knows about this case from media and society do not like murdering or accusation of murder when the murderer is mother of that child.

On those examples you can see how Polish legal system works. In my opinion it is well established.

The second country which I will describe is my native country-Ukraine.

Role of advocate is very important in Ukrainian Juridical and Legal system. And it is very hard to became a good and qualifying lawyer.

Ukrainian Law “Pro Advokaturu” regulates activity of advocates and claims that advocates it is a voluntary association who protects people rights who are citizens of Ukraine but rights of foreigners it protects as well. According to this Law lawyers have to be person with higher education of Ukrainian university or university of another country this person have to know national language, work as assistant of lawyer at list two years, pass qualified exam and get document with says that this person can work in the legal field. Because of the conflict of interests advocate cannot work in another legal structure like court, prosecutors, public notaries, law enforcement agencies, security services, public administration. Person who was convicted cannot work as an advocate. Lawyers have permission to have one or two assistant who have law degree to help him. Law of Ukraine ”Pro advocaturu”  № 2887-XII.10.

Nowdays in Ukraine job of advocate is very popular and a lot of young people choose it as their future profession, but not everyone manage even with studies. If someone wants to become an advocate it will take him or her very long time. First of all student need to choose university with Law faculty, it is very hard to get to such faculty because ,as I mentioned earlier, there are a lot of people willing to be advocates. In University it will take 6 years to study Law and program is very complicated. Not everyone can study till the end of university studies, some students realized that job of an advocate is not for them because there is not enough to study all Codes and Laws, you have to speak well, not hesitate to state your point of view, and present themselves well in the court. Students that graduated from the university cannot start working imediately, firstly they have to work for a several years as assistant of an advocate. While working as an assistant you will be in control of the advocate you working with and you need to all that he will tell you. Also you would get a lot of invaluable knowledge how to behave, what to do, what to tell and what not to tell in the court.

After two years of assistance work person should take qualifying exam in Lawyers Chamber. After completing all those actions they will be indefinitely assigned by advocate status and authority. Since that time you can start your career as an independent advocate. Svyatotskiy O.D.,Medvedchuk V.V. 1997 , “Advokatura: istorya I suchasnist”

Despite on such long and complex procedure of becoming lawyer big percentage of Ukrainian lawyers are unprofessional and they cannot help their clients or simply do not know how to do that. That is why government officials prefer work with lawyers from abroad. But still advocated plays an important role in Ukrainian legal system because they maintaining professional standards also they protect their client from unwarranted restrictions, prosecutions and provides legal assistant for them.

Also there are some situations in which advocate cannot help his or her client because of lack of the Juridical System of Ukraine in non-democratic society authorities just use it like a tool to remove their opponents. To illustrate this point clearly I want to present some examples which are very persuasive.

Firstly I want to consider Tymoshenko case. Yylia Tymoshenko was first Ukrainians female Premier Minister also she was successful businesswoman in gas industry. Tymoshenko was second after Victor Yushenko leader of Orange Revolution in 2004 and was a candidate in the Ukrainian President elections in 2010 but unfortunately lost those elections to Victor Yanukovich. She was in opposition to him and since V.Yanukovich became a president a number of criminal cases was opened against her. She was accused in trying giving bribes to judge, later one more criminal case was opened and Temoshenko was accused in misuse of public funds. In this case advocate could not help her. Judicial system of Ukraine is far from perfect and Mr.Yanukovich used it like a tool to prosecute political opponent who was Yulia Tymoshenko. In situations like that attorney work has very little scope for doing justice. So as a result she was sentenced to spend seven years in prison, after that she cannot work as a politician for three years and pay huge number of money to different organizations. Everybody knows that Ms.Tymoshenko is innocent. All as one states that Yanukovich just remove his opponent. This case aroused many protests in Ukraine and abroad. “Tymoshenko case”, 2012 May 8, www.bbc.co.ukMany opposition politics in Ukraine strongly supported Yuliu Tymoshenko ,some people has installed tent on the main street in Kiev, some organizations like ”Freedom house” and ”World Ukrainian Congress” demanded to make Yulia Tymoshenko free immediately. Even some politicions abroad presented their opinion towards this issue. For example: Ex-minister of Poland said that Yulia Tymoshenko is very influential woman and that her imprisonment was a mistake which has to be figured out. “Ex-premier of Poland: Yulia Tymoshenko was imprisoned because of her popularity”, 2012 December 7, www.tymoshenko.ua

Secondly, I want to provide one more example which has to be considered is Yuriy Lutsenko case. Yuriy Lutsenko is Ukrainian politician also he was a Minister of Home Affairs of Ukraine and opposition leader. Lutsenko situation was very similar to Tymoshenko case. In 2012 Lutsenko was accused in some criminal actions. In February 2010 he was arrested because of spending money of country in large amounts and two years later he was convicted to spend four years in prison. In August 2012 one more criminal case was opened against him, he was convicted to two year of prison because he didn't pay enough attention to situation with Viktor Yushenko poisoning. Mr.Lutsenko complained about that he was not informed why the was arrested , also he states that Ukrainian Government thereby violated two Articles of Convention, first was about right to liberty and security and the second one was about right to fair trial. Raphin R., “ECtHR hears Lutsenko case” , 2012 April 19 , www.ilawyerblog.com Reasons of imprisonment were not justified and now he is in prison his advocate could not help him. It was second example how Ukrainian president removes his opponents and in such cases advocates could not help their clients.

So, there were considered a lot of issues and now we can reach the conclusion that in Ukraine and in Poland the role of advocate is significant.

However, some points are common in both countries and some are little bit different. In Ukraine and in Poland to became advocate person should have a higher law education but the difference in period of studying, in Ukraine it is six years and in Poland student should study five years. In Both countries students should work as a lawyer assistant, Ukrainian students should work two years and polish students should work three. During this period in Ukraine students should pass one final exam to asses the Lawyers Association and in Poland before the final exam they have one more.

As you can see process of becoming an advocate almost the same. In both countries advocates hold and advocates ethics, behave in proper way, act as confident as it possible and represent him or her well in the court.

One thing that I did not mentioned about polish lawyers is that they have to wear special clothe in court, they have to wear long black trial and a green frill. In Ukraine advocated does not have to wear something like that. For Ukrainian lawyer classic costume and a tie are obligatory. In my opinion it is great to have something like polish advocates has, it is a kind of tradition which observed by every advocate who represent his or her client in the court.

I have described some cases. In Ukraine in some situation advocates cannot help his client as I have already mentioned state officials use the legal system like a tool to remove their opponents. In Ukraine there is a well-established legal system but unfortunately in does not work in right way, that is because of the non-democtatic society, we can clearly see it on examples of Tymoshenko and Lutsenko cases. And if we will consider Katarzyna Waњniewska case which happened in Poland we may notice that this woman was jailed but some time later police could not prove her guiltiness because of the lack of the evidence.

So, advocates is very important figure in every country of the world because they protect human rights which violating so often.

Bibliography

advocate law poland criminal

1. Vaskovskiy E.V., “Organizatsiya advocatory” p.203

2. “Madzia Wasniewska”, 2012 February 6, www.huffingtonpost.com

3. Law of Ukraine ”Pro advocaturu” № 2887-XII.10.

4. Svyatotskiy O.D.,Medvedchuk V.V. 1997 , “Advokatura: istorya I suchasnist”

5. “Tymoshenko case”, 2012 May 8, www.bbc.co.uk

6. “Ex-premier of Poland: Yulia Tymoshenko was imprisoned because of her popularity”, 2012 December 7, www.tymoshenko.ua

7. Raphin R., “ECtHR hears Lutsenko case” , 2012 April 19 , www.ilawyerblog.com

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