Dissertation for obtaining the scientific degree of candidate of legal sciences, specialty 12.00.07 (081 - Law). Research Institute of Public Law, Volodymyr Vynnychenko Central Ukrainian State University. Kropyvnytskyi, 2024.
The dissertation is devoted to the study of the legal nature of the lawyer's disciplinary responsibility, its features, the grounds and the procedure for bringing the latter to justice. It was determined that disciplinary proceedings against a lawyer are a process of determining violations of the lawyer's ethical and professional standards, which may lead to the application of disciplinary measures or punishments, which is carried out by the qualification and disciplinary commission of the bar in order to bring the lawyer to disciplinary responsibility. According to its content, disciplinary proceedings against a lawyer are: a form of exercise of state power and self-regulation of the legal profession; a way of ensuring that lawyers comply with the requirements of legislation, professional ethics and rules of advocacy; a form of protection of the rights and interests of citizens and legal entities that use a lawyer's legal assistance; a form of ensuring the independence of the bar.
It is emphasized that the legal regulation of disciplinary proceedings against a lawyer is a specific system of legal norms, precedents and organizational rules that determine the grounds, order and conditions of violation, review and appeal of disciplinary cases against lawyers, and establish the types of disciplinary sanctions that can be applied to lawyers, to ensure legality, responsibility and professional ethics in advocacy. The legal regulation of disciplinary proceedings against a lawyer protects the principles of advocacy, allows the self-government of lawyers to take measures to respond to cases of dishonest behavior of lawyers, contributes to increasing the level of professional responsibility of lawyers, ensures the protection of professional honor and dignity of lawyers.
Special new characteristics of the administrative-legal status of the qualification-disciplinary commission of the bar as a subject of disciplinary proceedings have been identified, which include: 1) a special procedure for acquiring administrative legal personality within the scope of the activities of subjects of bar self-government; 2) the allocation of legal status through the granting of powers to consider disciplinary cases against lawyers, which makes qualification and disciplinary commissions of the bar a key element of the system of bar self-governance; 3) the functional orientation of the status is not only a punishment function, but a protective one in terms of ensuring the rights and interests of lawyers.
The need to define one of the key signs of a lawyer's disciplinary misconduct is the negative consequences for the client and/or the institution of advocacy as a whole in their broad sense, which will protect lawyers from disciplinary liability in particular for making mistakes, including technical ones that do not indicate improper performance one's duties and neglecting the norms of the law.
The peculiarities of the processes of realization and change of the scope of legal personality of a lawyer within the framework of disciplinary proceedings are determined: 1) the primary basis for the implementation of the corresponding scope of legal personality in terms of specific procedural rights and obligations within the scope of disciplinary proceedings is the "legal personality of a lawyer", which acts as the main a qualitative characteristic that determines the possibility and ability of a lawyer as a "subject of law" to transform into a "subject of disciplinary legal relations", acting as one of the prerequisites for their occurrence along with the norms of the Law of Ukraine "On the Bar and Legal Practice" and a legal fact, in the absence of for which disciplinary legal relations would not arise - by making a decision to initiate a disciplinary case; 2) the occurrence of legal consequences in the form of a change in the scope of legal personality of a lawyer within the framework of the disciplinary proceedings procedure is possible only at the stage of making a decision in a disciplinary case, and the legal fact that affects the change in the scope of legal personality is the decision to bring the lawyer to disciplinary responsibility for committing disciplinary offense and the application of disciplinary sanctions to it.
