PASO Council meeting

On April 27, 2023, the next meeting of the PASO Council was held.

The first item on the agenda was the issue of changing the platform for the Internet-PASO program, which led to changes in the work with the mailboxes of lawyers and law firms and a strong reaction from lawyers.

On April 17, PASO lawyers received email notifications about changes in the operation of the Internet-PASO system due to its transfer from the Yandex system to PASO's own server. The Chamber of Advocates was forced to take such decisive action not on a whim. Yandex made its services paid for by all organizations, and PASO was no exception.

The cost of using one mailbox is set at 250 rubles per month. Thus, in order to maintain the previous conditions, it would be necessary to increase the deductions from each lawyer by this amount, and pay 550,000 rubles monthly for the maintenance of the electronic mailboxes of the PASO apparatus, lawyers and law firms for the months remaining before the conference. Such expenses were not provided for in the previous year's budget. Moreover, there were no guarantees that this increase was a one-time one and that tariffs would not increase in the future.

Finding a solution to the problem and its implementation required enormous efforts and time from PASO technical specialists who worked around the clock.

On the night of April 17, the process of transferring all archives of the Internet-PASO system to the Chamber's server began. After leaving Yandex, the shell of the mail program changed and lost a number of options. Some of them will be restored later. In addition, the mail program allows redirection to other email addresses.

When choosing a new platform for the Internet-PASO system, the main condition was to preserve the domain "paso.ru", which ensures its confidentiality for the outside world and guarantees that a person who is not a lawyer cannot register an address similar to PASO addresses in order to pose as a lawyer. As long as this domain belongs to PASO, an outsider cannot register an address that ends in "...@paso.ru".

At the moment, the transition period for the Internet-PASO system continues. Despite the fact that work is still underway and failures occur, all lawyers have the opportunity to receive and send letters from the previous e-mail address. The decision of the Chamber of Advocates of the Samara Region "On the Internet-PASO system" is still in effect and its cancellation is not planned. Communication between lawyers and the Chamber is still carried out exclusively using the e-mail addresses registered in this system.

Technical specialist of PASO Abdryakhimova Rumiya Rustamovna (+7 927 712 43 61) is ready to answer all questions related to access to e-mail during working hours.

Then the Council moved on to work on the agenda. It took the oath of allegiance to the lawyer's duty from four applicants who successfully passed the qualification exam in March, but did not take it together with the other applicants.

The Council satisfied four applications for suspension and two for termination of the status of a lawyer, as well as an application for the establishment of a lawyer's office.

The status of one lawyer was terminated due to death. The PASO Council honored the memory of lawyer Sergei Petrovich Vetlugin in silence.

Twenty-four lawyers were included in the SYUP system, one had a disciplinary sanction lifted early, and seven lawyers were credited with hours of professional development.

Based on the clients' statements, fourteen lawyers were thanked.

The Council reviewed eight disciplinary proceedings.

In two cases, the Qualification Commission did not find the elements of a disciplinary offense, and therefore the proceedings were terminated. The Council terminated two more due to reconciliation between the lawyer and the client.

Four proceedings were reviewed on the merits.

One was initiated based on a complaint from a principal against a lawyer who founded a law firm. After that, she, as the sole founder, entered into an agreement with the bar association of which she is a member. Moreover, she personally signed the agreement on behalf of both the LLC and the bar association, without being the chairperson. The subject of the agreement was that the LLC enters into an agreement with the principals (who were named in the agreement as "end consumers") for the provision of legal services, the bar association provides these services under them, and payment is received by the contractor, that is, the LLC. Within the framework of this "agreement", the LLC entered into an agreement for subscription services with one of the Samara universities, as well as with persons from the university management for defense in a criminal case. After the university's management changed, the new rector learned about these agreements and filed a complaint against the lawyer's actions with the PASO. The Qualification Commission established that the lawyer's actions constituted a disciplinary offence due to her gross violations of the provisions of the Qualification Commission and Article 25 of the Federal Law "On Advocacy and Advocacy Activity in the Russian Federation". The lawyer did not have the right to enter into an agreement on behalf of the Bar, since the Bar has no right to enter into agreements on the provision of legal assistance, and only the chairman has the right to act on its behalf within the powers defined in the charter. The subject of the concluded agreement implied the provision of legal assistance to an indefinite number of persons, which is directly prohibited by the Federal Law, and also did not contain any reference to the lawyer as the executor. The entire set of violations committed by the lawyer provided grounds for the application of the most severe disciplinary measures. Solely due to the fact that this was her first misconduct that came to the attention of the disciplinary bodies of the chamber, the position of the lawyer, who recognized the illegality of her actions, the Council considered it possible to limit herself to a reprimand. The second proceeding was initiated against a lawyer who provided legal assistance to both the plaintiff and the defendant in the same case. Initially, an instruction was accepted from one of them. The lawyer attached an order to the case, familiarized himself with the materials of the administrative proceedings initiated on the fact of the accident, and, according to the client, immersed himself in the case, gave him legal advice, etc. After that, the agreement was terminated. When a claim was brought against the client on the fact of the accident, our colleague entered the case as a representative of the plaintiff. During the meeting of the Qualification Commission, his position was based on the fact that the subject of the first agreement was formulated as "photocopying case materials", therefore, he did not provide legal assistance, and therefore had the right to provide assistance to the opposite party. The Commission did not agree with such arguments and saw in the actions a disciplinary offense. The KPEA directly prohibits a lawyer from engaging in any paid activity other than creative, teaching and scientific. According to the Federal Law, the subject of the agreement between the lawyer and the client may only be legal assistance. This fact is confirmed by the lawyer's order, which he attaches to the case materials. Familiarization of the lawyer with the case materials in the interests of the client is legal assistance. The lawyer does not have the right to include photocopying services in the agreement and provide them as non-legal services. In this case, it was obvious to the members of the Commission, as well as the Council, that the lawyer provided legal assistance to his client, received certain information on the case, which he subsequently used against him, in favor of the opponents. Thus, he committed the most serious violation of which a lawyer is capable - he betrayed his client. Only due to the fact that at the meeting of the Council the lawyer fully agreed with the conclusions of the commission, admitted his guilt and expressed remorse, the Council, not unanimously, but decided to retain the status, issuing a warning. A warning was also issued to the lawyer regarding whom the investigator's report was received. The facts set out in it served as the basis for the Vice President of PASO to submit a motion to initiate disciplinary proceedings. The lawyer entered into an agreement to provide legal assistance in another region, after which he ignored the investigator's summonses for investigative actions for a long time. When he finally began to respond to her, these responses in the form of text messages consisted of offensive expressions and abusive language. Their content boiled down to the fact that he did not intend to come in response to summonses in the winter for the next few months, since driving on the highway in winter is dangerous, and he did not plan to appear before spring. He demanded that the investigator suspend proceedings on the case for this time. The Council agreed with the findings of the Qualification Commission and issued a warning to the lawyer about the termination of his status.

The last case was initiated based on a report from a judge of the Samara Regional Court. The court hearing in the appellate instance was postponed at the request of the lawyer to review the case materials. The defense was carried out on demand. The date and time were agreed upon against signature. However, on the day of the hearing, the lawyer notified the court that he could not appear due to being busy with another case in a district court in another region. The Qualification Commission found that his actions constituted a misdemeanor. At the Council meeting, the lawyer admitted his guilt and assured that he had realized his mistake. He explained his actions by the belief that any case by agreement has priority over any case by appointment. During the disciplinary proceedings, he realized that this was far from the case. The presence of cases by agreement for a lawyer does not give him the right to disrupt other court hearings, especially if he was notified of them in advance. If a lawyer finds himself in a situation where he needs to make a choice and has doubts, then the easiest way is to call PASO and consult, and not make a decision based only on personal gain. When voting, the members of the Council took into account that the lawyer really realized his misconduct, apologized to the court and the participants in the process. Only for this reason, the Council, not unanimously, but still voted for the opportunity to preserve the colleague's right to work in the SUP system and terminated the proceedings due to insignificance.

The PASO Council received an appeal from lawyer Gasparyan A.A. about making additions to the Questionnaire approved by the PASO Council. The lawyer proposed to supplement it with several more points. The PASO Council draws the attention of colleagues to the fact that the text of the questionnaire contains the necessary minimum of information that the lawyer should agree with the client in order to avoid unfounded claims. This text can be supplemented by each of them independently, depending on the circumstances of a particular case. In itself, the failure of the lawyer to draw up the questionnaire is not an offense. However, the presence of the client's signatures in it can protect the lawyer from unfounded complaints about his actions. Under such circumstances, supplementing the text of the questionnaire with a decision of the Council seems inappropriate. Also, lawyer Gasparyan A.A. proposed to publish on the PASO website a form of request for a summons for a client held in a pre-trial detention facility. Since until now lawyers have independently managed to compose this simple form for themselves in the Word program, there are also no grounds for this.

PASO President T.D. Butovchenko informed the Council about the completion of almost two years of work on a large-scale printed publication dedicated to the history of the Samara Bar Association. With the help of professional historians and specialists of the PASO apparatus, materials from state regional archives, archival documents of the Samara Bar Association, memoirs of veterans of the Bar Association and other numerous sources were raised, which made it possible to reconstruct the history of the bar association in the region from 1864 to the present day. The book is published in a print run of 2,000 copies and will be presented at the Twenty-third (regular) annual conference of lawyers of the Samara Region on May 25, 2023. Subsequently, each lawyer will receive a copy of this unique publication.

At the end of the meeting, the Council traditionally decided to provide financial assistance to veterans of the bar on the Day of the Russian Bar.

PASO Press Center