Postcard from Prague – Part Two: Describing the Czech Legal Profession

PragueUnlike the situation in the United States, where we basically have a unified legal profession with a single type of lawyer, the Czech legal profession contains several different categories of legal professionals. While most Czech legal professionals have a common university education in law (see the previous post), they are classified by different categories which are determined by the role they play, and, to a lesser extent, by the nature of the three years apprenticeship that the individual law student completes following law school.

Czech educated lawyers are divided into three basic categories: advocates (or lawyers), public prosecutors, or judges. While there is some movement between these categories, most members of the legal profession spend their careers in one category or another. In addition to these three categories, some lawyers also serve as public notaries. Czech notaries are a sort of public official who provides important services related to inheritance and the drafting of legal documents. Notaries are appointed and their numbers are limited by statute. Importantly, notaries are viewed as neutral public figures who provide necessary services, but who do not represent their clients in the same way that advocates do.

In addition to lawyers who have been educated in the Czech Republic and licensed to practice law, lawyers may provide legal services if they fall into one of the following categories:

  1. Lawyers who have been educated in other countries but who can pass an examination in Czech or Slovak that tests their familiarity with Czech Law and rules of professional conduct.
  2. Lawyers from other countries who already reside in the Czech Republic who can establish that they have successfully practiced law for three years in the country, or who can convince a commission of the Czech Bar Association that they have the necessary knowledge of Czech Law and rules of professional conduct.
  3. Citizens of a member country of the European Union who have been admitted to practice law in their own country (or in any other EU country) who have registered with the Czech Bar Association. In regard to certain areas of law, EU lawyers may be required to consult with a member of the Czech bar while representing Czech clients. (This appears to be similar to our pro hac vice notion.)
  4. Lawyers from any other country, so long as they limit their practices to the law of their home countries and international law.

The years between the Velvet Revolution of 1998, which led to the collapse of the Czech Communist government, and the country’s entry into the European Union in 2004 were a period of transition for the Czech legal profession, and even more than a decade later a process of “sorting out” the boundaries of the legal profession is still ongoing.

Under the statutes currently regulating the practice of law, lawyers may practice as solo practitioners, in office-sharing relationships, and in firms. Once rare, increasingly larger law firms are beginning to dominate the practice of law in the Czech Republic, especially in the larger cities. A substantial number of firms based in other countries, including the United States, have established branch offices in Prague.

 

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“Affluenza:” A Get-Out-of-Jail-Free Card for the Wealthy?

Recently, news programs and papers have been flooded with stories regarding the 16 year-old boy from Texas, whose drunk-driving incident this past summer left four people dead, and a handful of people injured. The most troubling aspect of these stories for most people is the fact that the boy had received a very lenient sentence, a mere ten years’ of probation and some therapy, instead of the jail time that the prosecution asked for. The boy had been drinking prior to the accident, and his blood alcohol level at the time of the crash was about three times over the legal limit, not to mention the fact that an underage minor should have no alcohol in his system. The defense claimed that the boy suffered from what has been termed “affluenza,” which is defined as a condition where children who are from a wealthy and affluent background may not understand that “bad behavior has consequences.” (according to the Los Angeles Times). By touting the need for rehabilitation over a prison sentence, the defense was able to get the boy ten years’ probation, instead of the sentence sought for him.

This story has conjured up a lot of anger across the nation, and has left many people in shock over the fact that this seems to be one more case where the wealthy seem to be able to find their way around the legal system and be treated much more leniently than people of less affluent backgrounds. Many people believe that the outcome may have been different if the boy had not been wealthy, and this has created an outrage over the sense of entitlement that the teen was believed to have gotten. “Affluenza” is not a recognized disorder, but it has received national attention through this story. However, this “condition” that the boy’s defense team believed the teen suffered from prompts us to ask other questions: Don’t some people who live in impoverished conditions also suffer from the inability to see the consequences of certain actions, which is the same argument that “affluenza” gives for wealthy people, just at the opposite end of the spectrum? Should “affluenza” be recognized as a “trump card” of sorts for the wealthy, when others could just as likely have a similar argument about knowing right from wrong?

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The Skills I Use in Law School, I Learned From Third Graders

When I first came to law school, I thought that I was at a disadvantage compared to a lot of my peers. Instead of coming straight to law school out of undergraduate studies, I had been an elementary school teacher for about three years before I decided to return to school to study law. I did not have an undergraduate degree in anything related to the law, politics, or even social sciences. I had never set foot in a law firm office before. The only exposure that I had had to the law was mostly through the depictions seen on television and in the movies.

While some of my peers had taken courses to prepare them for the study of law, I was making macaroni pictures with third graders and teaching them about division and grouping. While most pre-law students spent time with counselors to prepare them for the law school journey, I was attending teacher conferences and working with guided reading groups in the classroom.

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