Social networks are becoming more and more a part of our everyday life and thus a part of the legal profession, which is why the 39th Croatian Lawyers’ Day, which was held on Friday in Zagreb, was dedicated to the good and bad sides of lawyers’ presence on social networks.
In the introductory welcome speech on the problems and situation in the legal profession, the president of the Croatian Bar Association (HOK) Robert Travaš spoke, who pointed out that “we are not satisfied with the behavior and work of the European Commission, i.e. its Directorate General for the Internal Market in relation to the Croatian legal profession”, which in with its requests and demands that it puts before the HOK, it does not take into account that the Croatian Bar Association “in order to preserve its independence is financed solely and exclusively from the membership fees and registration fees of its members”.
“Let our ministries (and I do not mean the Ministry of Justice and Administration) simply copy and blindly listen to everything that comes from Brussels and become, as they say, ‘greater believers than the Pope’ in the implementation of directives,” Travaš pointed out and added that in the legal profession employs the largest number of lawyers in the Republic of Croatia, while at the same time the scope of legal work is constantly decreasing.
“In that situation, even smaller states like ours must know how to defend and realize their national interest within the given framework, and the Croatian legal profession is or should be the Croatian national interest,” emphasized the president of the HOK.
“As a representative of the Croatian legal profession, I cannot remain silent about some statements in the part of the report of the President of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Croatia on the state of the judiciary submitted to the Parliament of the Republic of Croatia, which touch on the legal profession”, Travaš continued and referred to two things: the right of lawyers to submit motions for permission audits and the costs of the procedure.
HOK has been demanding for years that lawyers be given access to the entire court practice, because it is “a conditio sine qua non to be able to properly set up and justify a proposal for permission to revise”.
“When we are enabled to do so, then we can start discussing whether and in what way the access of lawyers to the Supreme Court of the Republic of Croatia should be regulated in the event that they are not competent enough or behave unprofessionally in relation to the Supreme Court of the Republic of Croatia”; he concluded.
Regarding the allegation of the President of the Supreme Court of Justice that the lawyers are deliberately prolonging the proceedings, Travaš said that he believes that such allegations are unfounded considering the limitation of the number of actions recognized by the court for cost compensation in the first-instance proceedings, which has existed in the Tariff for a long time , and that “before making such allegations about our profession, it would have been correct to discuss this with the HOK, which represents the legal profession in the Republic of Croatia”, but, as he said, “unfortunately, this was not done”.
At the end of his speech, the president of HOK reminded that “notaries do not have the legal authority to draw up private documents, but only to certify signatures on them, so I ask them to stick to that”.
President of the HOK Bar Academy, Ph.D. Laura Valković moderated the round table and the topic “To be or not to be a lawyer on social networks” was spoken by associate professor Tea Vukušić Rukavina from the Faculty of Medicine in Zagreb.
Taken from: Croatian Lawyer Association