Iusland Law Office’s advocates participated in the Round-table conference themed “Problematic questions of advocate’s implementation in procedural rights at pre-court stage: making applications, appealing against illegal actions of officials”

April 10th 2019 a Round-table conference on the topic of “Problematic questions of advocate’s implementation in procedural rights at pre-court stage: making applications, appealing against illegal actions of officials” took place. Iusland Law Office’s advocates Alexander Changli, Alexander Leontyev and Ilya Juravkov participated in the event.

The event was arranged by the Chamber of Advocates of Saint-Petersburg. Iusland’s partner Alexander Changli was the moderator of the Round-table and also the head of the group of plenipotentiary representatives on defense of advocate’s professional rights.

The focus of the Round-table was on the most relevant questions for lawyers: advocate’s applications on criminal matters, complaints (as a part of article 124 of the Russian Code of Criminal Procedure), and other procedural papers were considered citizen appeals which leads to the violation of processing time that is set up by the Russian Code of Criminal Procedure. Advocate’s access to a coroner and the investigators’ registry is made difficult.

According to the article 120 of the Russian Code of Criminal Procedure, lawyers who made an application will receive a response quickly, not longer than in three days after the application was accepted. However, coroners don’t follow this procedure and accept advocate’s applications as regular citizen’s applications (by Federal Law №59), not considering advocate’s special status. This situation massively complicates advocates’ work.

In the conclusion of the Round-table a decision was made that the administration of the Chamber of Advocates of Saint-Petersburg has to address the problem to the Federal Chamber of Advocates, administration of the Russian Interior Ministry and the Attorney General of Russia, in order to change the current situation.

Such events will continue to take place until the problem is solved.