Lawyers Open 2012: “Right in the hole!”

Lawyers Open 2012, an open golf tournament, was held at the Moscow City Golf Club.

Moscow Advocates’ Club was the organizer of the event. The Law Firm "YUST" was a partner of the Tournament.

Novaya Advokatskaya Gazeta (New Advocate’s Newspaper) dated 01.10.2012 (excerpt):

“Besides the sport competitions, the advocates also exercised their rhetoric skills, having chosen for discussion a topical theme of the advocate’s monopoly. An in order to make the conversation interesting, prominent speakers were invited: Yury Pilipenko, First Vice President of the FCA, who took up the role of the “destructor of Carthage” last year, and by Carthage he means the notorious dualism of the private practice lawyers’ profession, Olga Pleshanova, Managing Editor of ZAKON portal, Evgeny Shestakov, managing partner of Intellekt-S group of law companies.

Without going into details of the discussion, we will highlight several crucial points. Yury Pilipenko for the first time voiced his own position on the issue of the possible integration with the consultants. He believes that the process will be relatively painless, if the consultants are admitted to advocacy without special exams and in a simplified procedure, provided they have legal higher education, two years of legal professional experience and recommendations by two advocates of the chamber, which the aspirant intends to join.

Evgeny Shestakov, the leader of the non-advocate wing of the practicing lawyers, also concretized his position: he declared that threatening consultants with the advocate’s monopoly is the same as “scaring mice with cheese”. However, he believes that integration into advocacy will be comfortable for the consultants, only if the advocate’s activity is acknowledged as a commercial one, and if all instruments used by the English and American advocates are adopted.

It should be noted that Y.Pilipenko’s declaration, even if unofficial, is not a step, but a series of steps towards the consultants, but E.Shestakov’s position is deliberately unacceptable for Russian advocates as well as for their colleagues from France, Germany and many other European countries, and it stalls the integration dialogue.

However, this did not happen at Lawyers Open 2012. The discussion was heated, but did not prevent the members of the event from having an evening, as the official saying goes, of a warm and friendly atmosphere”.

Full version of the publication is available here.

Publications on the event are available at Zakon.Ru and Право.Ru.