Pavlo Vovk may renew his attorney license

A path into the legal profession is opening up for Pavlo Vovk after the Supreme Court refused to reinstate him as a judge. Vovk suspended his right to practice law back in 2007, but he can renew it very quickly. Pavlo Vovk would then join the team of Lidia Izovitova and Andriy Yermak, and together with them would be able to counteract the reform of the legal profession.

The current law on advocacy, which its leadership considers very pro-European, contains no safeguards to prevent odious figures like Vovk from being able to renew or obtain a attorney license. This is precisely why the legal profession has long become a refuge for judges, prosecutors, or investigators dismissed from their positions.

In particular, after their dismissal, former judge Artur Yemelianov and former prosecutors Anatoliy Matios and Dmytro Borzykh became attorneys. As a result, there is a distinct category of attorneys who are not engaged in defending their clients in accordance with the law, but rather in bribing prosecutors and judges through old connections.

One reason for this is that, unlike EU states and Western democracies, Ukraine has no integrity checks whatsoever for individuals who want to become attorneys. And the disciplinary bodies are more inclined to persecute attorneys who openly speak about the crisis within the legal profession and its leadership. It would therefore be worth introducing integrity checks — this would bring our legislation closer to European standards and would prevent people implicated in corruption or in actions favouring Russia from becoming attorneys.

Read more about the experience of European states and recommendations for Ukraine in our analysis.