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Ministry of Justice starts shake-up among lawyers

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Ministry of Justice starts shake-up among lawyers

As the website of the Ministry of Justice informs, unscheduled qualification exams for lawyers have started in Belarus.

The main justice directorates has approved composition of certifying commissions consisting of representatives of main departments of justice, bodies of lawyer’s administration, members of the local councils, representatives of courts and judicial science.

Certifying commissions headed by chiefs of appropriate main justice directorates will evaluate the work of lawyers taking into account quantitative and qualitative indicators of lawyers’ work on criminal and civil cases, as well as cases relating to economic disputes and administrative offences.

Judicial education of public and rendering legal assistance to inhabitants of villages and small towns will also be assessed. Awards, disciplinary sanctions and facts of violation of the legislation will be taken into consideration, the website of the Ministry of Justice says.

“Examination results will allow assessing the quality and performance of the work of an individual lawyer and an appropriate district legal office and regional (Minsk city) bars as a whole,” the notice said.

We remind that the Ministry of Justice disbarred in February four lawyers from the Minsk City Bar - Aleh Aheeu, Tatsyana Aheeva, Uladzimir Toustsik, and Tamara Haraeva. They defended people in a criminal case of the so called mass disorders in Minsk on December 19. On March 3, Pavel Sapelka, the lawyer of presidential candidate Andrei Sannikov, was disbarred.

On March 23, the Ministry of Justice warned the presidium of the Minsk City Bar on possible applying disciplinary and administrative sanctions to “certain officials” if the “policy of confrontation and politicizing the questions of disbarment is continued,” a member of the bar said.

Pavel Sapelka applied to the Constitutional Court of Belarus on June 6 asking to give legal assessment to the order of the Ministry of Justice to carry out unscheduled examinations.

The former lawyer states the order of the Ministry of Justice does not comply with legal acts regulating lawyers’ activity, including the law on bar and the Ministry of Justice’s regulation on approving the Instruction of Order of Holding Certification Exams for Lawyers. These documents do not say directly about unscheduled qualification exams.

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