The government has introduced amendments to the second reading of its own bill on legal practice. Now it proposes to deprive the status of lawyers who left Russia for a period of more than a year, the Federal Chamber of Lawyers (FPA) and Advokatskaya Gazeta report.
The decision to terminate the status is made by the councils of regional chambers of lawyers based on the conclusions of the qualification commissions. To the grounds for this, the authors of the amendments decided to add “the departure of a lawyer for permanent residence or for a period of more than one year outside the Russian Federation.”
As the FPA writes, an exception will be made for treatment or training of lawyers abroad, in case of emigration together with family members who need it for work, or if there are “other good reasons.”
The table of amendments has not yet been published in the bill card. The project, which was adopted in the first reading in February, initially concerned the requirements for new candidates for lawyers and the creation of a unified register of lawyers. The Ministry of Justice began developing it even before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Vice-President of the Federal Chamber of Lawyers Oleg Baulin, in a conversation with Advokatskaya Gazeta, called the new amendments “one of the most well-developed bills, in the work on which the FPA of the Russian Federation is participating more than two years, from July 2021.” Baulin clarified to Kommersant that “deprivation of status certainly does not threaten lawyers who defend the interests of Russian citizens and companies abroad.”