What the regional press writes about

Rostov residents will not talk to police without a lawyer
Residents of the Zheleznodorozhny district of Rostov-on-Don will now build relations with the police according to European standards. A legal consultation office that opened there offered clients a subscription service system, reports the Gorod N newspaper. Those caught in the act, not to mention honest citizens who are unfairly suspected, will be able to proudly utter the sacramental phrase: “I will not speak without my lawyer.”

Subscription services are widespread in Europe and the USA, but their introduction in Russia is only being planned. Thus, in Rostov they anticipated one of the provisions of the future law on the legal profession. The decision to open a legal consultation with an unconventional range of services was made by the presidium of the Rostov Bar Association with the assistance of the district and city leadership.
The subscription service system assumes that the lawyer becomes something like a family doctor. In case of disagreements with law enforcement agencies, the client of legal advice can call his lawyer to the scene at any time of the day. And it doesn’t matter whether the client broke a glass in a trolleybus, robbed a savings bank, or forgot his passport at home. Until now, such a situation was familiar to Russian citizens only from foreign detective stories and films, writes “City N”.
The price of subscription services will be set by agreement of the parties and, according to the management of the consultation, will be quite affordable for people of average income. For specific cases they will charge an additional fee depending on the complexity. The consultation intends to provide services to the poor as well. As the head of the consultation, Eduard Shaposhnikov, told a newspaper correspondent, “we cannot refuse the grandmother who contacted us and we will not take money from her.” District and city leaders were very interested in the social prospects of the new project, reports City N.

VYACHESLAV Kommersant-VARVANIN

Newspaper "Kommersant" No. 117 dated 07/02/1998, p. 4