The foreign estates: reality and prospects.
The process of entry of Ukraine to the European and World commonwealth, expansion and deepening of international ties, a significant growth of migration processes, acquisition of the priority-oriented concern about protection of human rights demand activation and coordination of actions of all political forces and intellectual potential of the Ukrainian society in the realization of national interests of Ukraine and formation of its positive image on the international arena. First of all it applies to the state structures and public organizations such as bar associations in the foreign matters. One of the aforementioned associations is the "Ukrainian Law Associates" practicing in the field of legal protection of the proprietary and personal non-proprietary interests of the Ukrainian legal entities and individuals abroad, rendering legal assistance to the legal entities and individuals in Ukraine. Today, our guest is the Honorary President of this authoritative association Victor RADZIEVSKY.
- Dear Mr. Radzievsky, would you please tell us when and in what conditions your bar association has been created and progressed, what were the cases you have started therewith?
- It turned out that after graduation in 1973 from the department of international relations and international law of the Kyiv State University during almost 20 years I have been working in the system of Iniurcolleguia. In fact it was a federal state structure with trappings of the bar acting in the republics through its representations enjoying monopoly in processing civil cases abroad de-jure and de-facto. The decay of the USSR in 1992 left its imprint on the destiny of Iniurcolleguia. The collectives of its representations in the former soviet republics have initiated the creation of independent bar associations with the same specialization, though being a non-state form thereof. "Ukriniurkoleguia" was created in 1992 on the basis of the Representation of Iniurcolleguia in Ukr.SSR, "Beliniurcolleguia" - on the basis of the analogous Representation in Belarus, etc. With the lapse of time the "new-fashioned" out-of-center tendencies hooked the newly created specialized bar associations of already independent countries. The outflow of qualified and skilful lawyers did not passed by "Ukriniurkoleguia". Some lawyers decided to settle themselves in the Governmental offices, some for different reasons decided to earn their "daily bread" on their own. It is obvious that a distinctive catalyzer of the process of advocatory "hanging around" in Ukraine became the new Law of Ukraine "On the Bar" adopted in December 1992, opening great opportunities for individual and collective legal practice. As a whole, the processes of democratization of our society, the course on the construction of a state of law has sharpened the sense of freedom of choice including the lawyers and their further professional fortune.
Our structure commenced functioning on the 3rd of March 1993 and bore the name of its founders. In 1997 it was reorganized to the specialized bar associations in the foreign affairs "Ukrainian Law Associates", abbreviation - UPK. At present our association is known under this name.
The make of our structure was difficult and especially at the initial stage. The zero start appeared to be much more harder than we could imagine. We have faced problems with the office to rent. There was shortage of money to buy office facilities. Some difficulties we encountered at the stage of "primary accumulation of cases". However, we have managed to settle these problems quite soon - thousands of civil cases already passed through our association.
At the beginning we concentrated on estate matters because of great experience in dealing therewith for a long period of time. First of all we have sent informative letters on the creation of our structure to those foreign colleagues whom we knew in person or through correspondence. They congratulated us on this event and due to the principle of free choice in selecting a business partner consented to cooperate.
Eventually materials in foreign estate matters started to arrive regularly not only from our foreign counterparts, but either from our citizens. They've got to know about our firm from newspapers, from officers of notary and vital statistics offices being informed about the creation of our structure by the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine, Village Councils where we used to send our inquiries of search for the relatives, etc.
- Did any structural changes take place last time in your association, did you expand directions of activities? Or do you concentrate the main efforts on estate matters as before?
- The estate matters were and will be always in the sphere of our attention. However, it would be not advisable to have a stake in the estate matters only. We try to keep pace with the rhythm of life, timely take changes thereof, but the foremost goal - is to work for long-run prospects by gradual improvement and expansion of a mechanism of rendering legal assistance to individuals and legal entities, namely in legal escorting of business activity.
The strategy of our association is based on comprehension of the complexity and diversity of modern legal relationships. A complex of problems arisen from the above legal relationships of the participators could not be effectively resolved without a systemic professional approach. To this end we worked out and gradually put into practice a concept of all-around legal protection of lawful interests of our clients, prevention from problem (crisis) situation which may occur. Please note, prevention, and not only liquidation of consequences thereof. We realize this through the institutional mechanism consisting of four blocks: juridical assistance, financial consulting (audit), corporate management and informative-analytical coverage. Naturally, we select the appropriate structure to fit this concept. We create specialized departments, (estate and family matters, commercial law, corporate management and privatization, judicial and arbitration cases, banking and financial law, copyright and allied rights, immigration and emigration cases, etc.) along with subsidiary structures, e.g. one of the most powerful national auditing companies "UPK-audit" belongs thereto.
