For those who cannot afford a lawyer, a network of legal clinics staffed by law students and providing legal advice has been set up by billionaire Victor Pinchuk and the International Renaissance Foundation.
Legal clinics are now becoming more popular in Ukraine out of necessity. At these clinics, local law students provide free legal advice to those who can’t afford it. About 60 of these clinics are part of the Kyiv-based Association of Legal Clinics.
In 1996, Ukrainian students studying abroad first proposed the clinics for Ukraine after seeking how they worked internationally. In 2006, the Cabinet of Ministers required some law schools to establish such clinics.
Since 2004, with the help of Ukrainian billionaire Victor Pinchuk and the International Renaissance Foundation a network of 37 clinics in 21 regions was established. Overall, Pinchuk’s investments in the project stand at $733,000.
The majority of Ukrainian law firms are also involved in various charity and corporate social responsibility programs. Lavrynovych & Partners views the establishment of legal clinics as a worthwhile project and welcomes other law firms to cooperate in this effort.
On March 1, Lavrynovych & Partners established the Central Legal Clinic in Kyiv. It’s known for its effective supervision of students and graduates by practicing lawyers instead of academic professors. This is likely to raise the quality of pro bono legal aid in Ukraine, according to Maksym Lavrynovych, the company’s managing partner.
Moreover, the idea of providing pro bono legal services and staffing legal clinics with professional lawyers is popular among such globally renowned law and audit firms as White & Case, Clifford Chance and EY.
“Since the legal market is not in demand as much as it was before, a lot of qualified graduates are off the legal road,” Lavrynovych says. “The legal clinic will give them an opportunity to practice law and will help us to staff our law firm with the best young specialists.”
However, he believes it is just the right time to revisit the concept and to have legal clinics revolve around the practices of law firms. “Just before this interview, I passed by one the older legal clinics on my way to office. The windows were nailed up. This is the state of legal clinics in Ukraine,” he said.
While an exaggeration, the quality of a legal clinics’ services largely depends on the quality of education provided by the accompanying university, says Natalia Stupnitska of the Organization for the Security and Cooperation in Europe.
Representatives of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, Kyiv Taras Shevchenko University and Lviv Ivan Franko University say the clinics take on up to 200 cases a year. It is difficult to measure the success, since usually they do not represent clients in the courts.
“Sometimes clients come up with neglected cases that are being reviewed by the cassation courts. Obviously, we are powerless in such situations,” says Anna Pelyushkevych, head of the clinic at Lviv Ivan Franko University.
Meanwhile, Yulia Matveeva, head of Kyiv-Mohyla’s experimental law clinic, says the Cabinet’s regulation has had an adverse effect.
“I have recently been to one of Kyiv’s universities, which has a law faculty and a huge budget,” she says. “Instead of a law clinic I found nothing but a nameplate. It did not even have a journal of registration of requests. Thus, it is great time to introduce standards for the legal clinics.”
Though she finds pro bono legal services useful, she believes the legal clinic brand should be part of law schools, not law firms. “While it is good that licensed attorneys provide legal services pro bono, according to existing standards, they cannot possess the title of ‘legal clinic’.”
While there is much to be done, the Viktor Pinchuk Foundation believes the legal clinics project has been successful.
“Throughout its existence, it has enabled Ukrainian citizens to learn about their rights and to protect them against unjust and non-transparent aspects of the legal system,” it said in a statement.” The fact that now a Ukrainian private legal company (Lavrynovych & Partners) took up the idea and built upon it can be seen as a proof of the success of the project.”
