Armenians hesitate about applying for legal protection in the sphere of health care. In the interview with Iravaban.net, Head of the “Sirunyan” Law Office, PHD in Law, Associate Professor Aleksander Sirunyan noted that the problem is the law level of legal consciousness. We have spoken about this and other questions with A.Sirunyan in the frameworks of the “Armenian Law Firms” Series.
-Mr Sirunyan, when was the office founded?
-The office was founded in 2009 just after I left the prosecution. I have got the license in 2009. By the way it was principle for me to get the license, as in those days it was allowed to work without license, credentials were enough for implementing defense in courts. However, in my opinion, the specialist ought to have a license.
– Why did you leave the prosecution?
-Voluntarily. It hindered my teaching activities. I was appointed to a position in Ararat prosecution, the residence was in Vedi. It was impossible to combine the work with lecturing at the university. The university was definitely preferential. There is an interesting thing about the Armenian lawyers: when they say “I am going to the faculty” it means that he goes to the YSU faculty of law. There are not such things in other professions. Work in the faculty is much higher than that of working as in prosecution.
-Which spheres of law is your office specialized in?
-We deal with both civil and criminal cases; the division exists among the employees. I prefer the civil law, because it is exact in contrast to the criminal law. Moreover, there are no unsettled problems in the civil law. Our judges make huge work when they begin changing the clearly written norms. Here everything is in its place; every case has its prescription.
-If I am not mistake, your office attaches great importance to the health care law.
-It is something like a hobby. People do not need legal defense in this field. They would like to complain to their neighbor saying that doctors have deceived them, instead of applying for defense. Maybe it is because of the lack of legal consciousness. By the way, we have announced that the prices of the provided legal services connected with the health care law will be discussed only after the result of the case.
-You also provide legal services connected with donors for such cases like surrogate motherhood and in vitro fertilization. It seems like your office is the most popular in this sphere.
-We provide the contracts signed between the two sides, in cooperation with the organization “Healthy Thought” (“Healthy Thought” searches donors of spermatozoon for sterile couples). Those contracts are complicated and extensive, 23-24 pages long.
-What kind of problems arises referring the human rights violations?
-No problems arise in the case of our contracts, but many problems arise in the whole, parents, surrogate mothers are being deceived. Afterwards they come to our office for support. They show us the contract written on one page, moreover names are written on the half of it, and on the other half approximately the following is written: ”R promised to give birth to a baby, A promised to pay”. Our contracts include such details as buying at least two clothes for the pregnant woman, or the pregnant woman shall not clean the carpets in the Godfather’s house, etc.
-When I was writing an article about this case, I found out that some international agencies dealing with the search of surrogate mothers or donors have special section for Armenia, noting that there are liberal law here and that unlike other countries, companies dealing with such kind of things are tolerant towards the homosexual couples. Is it truth, have you ever helped the homosexual couples to become parents.
-No we have never helped them because we are against it. I don’t mind whether the liberals and tolerates get offended, but how shall I do such a thing? I do not know who did or who organized. But there have been such cases.
-Some changes have occurred in this sphere recently and foreigners were forbidden to use the services of Armenian surrogate mothers. What did it give?
-The so called foreigner is also Armenian, 10 mln of 12 mln Armenians do not leave in Armenia. I do not remember foreigners applying for it. From the business viewpoint it was bad, because the number of cases have been reduced because of dropping out those people from the market. The legislative body will know better about its positive sides.
-Recently, especially in the advocates’ community, the input of the juridical failure insurance institution is discussed very much. What do you think of it?
-It is a very good thing, but we don’t even have a medical insurance, so how we can speak about the insurance of the juridical failure. Anyway, I think that it will develop along with the development of the market.
-How many advocates work in your office? What do you think of the shareholder administration, consolidation of teams?
-The law says that the advocate may act in any allowed way. If they agree to work like an ”employer-employee” they may do it, if they want to administrate equally they may do it. They must work no matter how.
-I am against the merger of offices, because everything large is bad. Isn’t it possible that in this sphere also may be monopolies like it is in the food market?
-As a stockholder there are four of us, and two lawyers work. Moreover we send the beginners to the School Advocate for training and to receive a license as well as have opportunity for progress. We are not jealous about our colleagues. We do not share our money, we do not work in percentage, and everyone does his job. At the end of the month we count the water, electricity and the cleaner service expenses and share it. In all the other cases everyone works for himself, although I am the founder of the office.
-The logo of your office is very unique and unusual; will you tell how it was chosen?
-When the office was opened in 2009 majority of juridical offices had logos with pen and papers, books and hammers. As we were just entering the market we decided to differ. We took the red cross which does not have any connection with the medicine. According to the Bern convention red cross is the symbol of defense In the war. Last year we decided to change the logo. It is more than 30 years that our family is the fan of Italian football. It is something like shrine for my son. His schoolmates are fans of ”Barcelona” or ”Real” but Sirunyan Sergey is fan of Italian ”Juventus”. So we took the oval ball of the ”Juventus” logo then we made a shield from it and made our new logo preserving red and white colors of our old logo.
We do not want the Citizens to do Unnecessary Expenses: Gurgen Malkhasyan
“Who is the King of the Jungle?” the Judge’s Question shocked the Advocate
“Our Objective was to create a Universal Office of Advocates:” Karen Sardaryan
The Profession of a Lawyer is obliging Morally as well։ Grigor Minasyan
The Lawyers of “Legal lab” decided to build a working culture in the legal field
“We work on case as a team and hold responsibility as a team”, – law firm founder
