Vetting that we know from International Experience is not applicable to the Advocacy Institute. The President of the Chamber of Advocates Simon Babayan said this in a conversation with Iravaban.net, referring to the speech of the President of the Supreme Judicial Council Gagik Jhangiryan a few days ago, where the latter expressed an opinion on the vetting of lawyers, saying: “I can say that the process of cleaning and purification should also refer to the advocates’ service, because, unfortunately, it is accepted in our country, for the most part, I do not want to offend anyone, but there are advocates who communicate with law enforcement agencies and courts in various cases very easily get recognition. In other words, this vetting must include the entire judicial system and all the bodies that serve and support it.””
He noted that first of all, before making assessments on the expediency of any process (in our case, vetting), its essence and content should be revealed.
“To date, the term ‘vetting’ has not been clarified in domestic legislation. We present views on vetting in the context of some examples from international experience. Therefore, in this case we can express an opinion exclusively from the point of view of that international experience,” Babayan said.
Speaking about the vetting of advocates, he mentioned that the Advocacy Institute is not a service of state subordination, it is a self-regulatory union of independent advocates: moreover, it is an important element of the civil society.
“Consequently, vetting we know from International Experience is not applicable to the Advocacy Institute. The agenda for vetting of the Advocacy Institute is a legally incorrect approach: vetting is not applied to civil society institutions, it is exclusively applicable to state institutions,” he said.
Referring to the question that Gagik Jhangiryan grounded his opinion, saying that today many advocates are gaining recognition, as they are very easy to communicate with law enforcement bodies and courts in various cases, Simon Babayan said.
“It should be noted that the Chamber of Advocates and Armenian advocacy in general have strongly condemned such phenomena and considered them unacceptable. Moreover, such conduct appears to be allegedly a crime, or at least an obvious gross disciplinary violation, which is grounds for terminating of advocate’s license. This is evidenced by the legal practice of the Board of the Chamber in disciplinary proceedings.”
He said that the procedures in the Chamber of Advocates fully satisfy to giving a legal assessment to the mentioned vicious phenomena in case of their occurrence. Therefore, the introduction of any toolkit for cleansing advocacy will be seen as an interference with the independence of the profession of advocate, which in turn will lead to a natural, legitimate response from members of the advocates’ community.
“As for the idea of creating several chambers of advocacy which is presented as a “reform”, I have repeatedly stated that this is not only a setback for the institute, but also a concrete tendency to split the advocacy community,” Babayan said, referring to the assertion a group of advocates that if vetting is the basis for reform, then reform can also be achieved through the formation of unions.
He considered it necessary to mention that such an opinion was presented by a minority of the member of the advocates’ community. Therefore, such a view cannot be considered decisive for the whole community.
“The experience of the advocates’ communities of leading countries also testifies that. Models of multi-chamber advocacy institutes are typically used in large advocacy communities, where the division is based on the territorial principle. Advocacy institutes close to the number of the Armenian advocates have a unicameral structure,” the President of the Chamber of Advocates Simon Babayan concluded.
Lusine Hakobyan
