Yury Pilipenko: the President of the FCA should be entitled to initiate disciplinary proceedings in any region of Russia

The round table “Professional ethics in the legal profession” was held on May 18 within the framework of the International Juridical Forum (Saint Petersburg). The round table was attended by Vasily Rudomino, member of the Council of the Federal Chamber of Advocates of the Russian Federation, Yury Pilipenko, Managing Partner at the Firm, Geraldine Clark and John Corcoran, Co-Chairpersons of the IBA Professional Ethics Committee, and Professor Adrian Evans.

The participants raised the issues of the positive effect on the professional growth of the legal profession borne by the Ethic Code in Russia, of the Ethic Code’s compliance with the international standards, of the self-regulation of advocates’ associations, of the conflicts of interests in the advocacy, and other matters.

In his speech, Y.Pilipenko called the participants’ attention to the following fact. Russia is currently facing a serious problem – moral deterioration of the society, and this problem has also spread to the advocates’ corporation. He said: “A manifestation of this is that many advocates, when not performing their professional activity, show disregard towards universal principles and norms of morality and ethics. On the other hand, such disregard invariably causes violations of rules of professional ethics, harmfully affects the advocates’ professional level and the quality of legal assistance rendered by them”.

Y.Pilipenko sees introduction of material amendments and additions to the Advocate’s Code of Professional Ethics as a means to resolve this problem. He believes that there is an objective necessity to expand the document by inclusion of the rule that following universal principles of morality and ethics is the advocates’ most important professional duty.

Moreover, the powers of the President of the FCA should be expanded by endowing him with the right to initiate disciplinary proceedings in any region of Russia for the purpose of protection of business reputation of the advocates’ corporation.

Y.Pilipenko suggested expansion of the list of disciplinary responsibility measures by including suspension of an advocate’s status for a certain period in it.

He stresses that it is undoubtedly impossible to make those changes without strengthening the mechanism of their enforcement, that is why he recommended imposition of the duty to execute the decisions of the bodies of chambers of advocates of the federal units and the Federal Chamber of Advocates not only on the leaders of the advocates’ associations, but also on the chambers’ presidents.

The participants of the round table also discussed the necessity to create in Russian special funds for the purpose of possible payment of compensations to the advocates’ clients for damages caused.

The question on whether advocates should be obliged to spend 10% of their time rendering gratuitous legal services, and how an advocate should treat violations of the law by his client, was eagerly discussed.