How to find a lawyer for yourself

Instruction The New Times*: Where to look for a lawyer for yourself, what can be expected from him and what should he be

Mikhail Khodorkovsky could afford to support a whole team of lawyers. Most people have no such opportunity. Therefore, it is so important to choose the right lawyer

The search for a lawyer is often compared with the search for a doctor. They say: look for a good lawyer on recommendations, by friends how you are looking for a good doctor. A good doctor, like a good lawyer, is expensive. Only the chance that he can help you is even less than the likelihood that a decent doctor in our nightmare medicine will be able to cure you. Especially if you go in a politically motivated or custom -made case. Nevertheless, a lawyer needs: “You cannot protect yourself,” says politician and lawyer Alexei Navalny, who will be defended by two lawyers in the process in Kirov. “You must have a professional defender who knows the technology of investigation and process.” Well, besides, it’s impossible to fight alone against a powerful law enforcement and judicial vehicle, imprisoned in advance to crush you. Therefore, it is so important not to be mistaken when choosing a lawyer with whom you will have to develop tactics and strategy of struggle.

Do not take "resolver" lawyers

“Many with whom I had to sit in a pre -trial detention center had a negative attitude towards lawyers: I took money, promised to help, did nothing. As a rule, lawyers are perceived as some “decisors” who can agree on your case, ”says Inna Bazhina, who was accused in a high -profile economic case of smuggling of polymeric materials. She spent almost two years in a pre -trial detention center, was sentenced to 15 years in a colony. The case was terminated in connection with the decriminalization of Art. 188 ("smuggling"), and Inna was released.

Lawyers-“resolver”, “fixers”, “storks”-as soon as they are not called. These are people with ties, as a rule, former law enforcement officers who promise to greatly facilitate your fate for money. They can promise to retrain the article with a heavier to less serious one in the investigation or in court. They also promise to achieve the direction of the case to the prosecutor's office, followed by its termination or a conditional term. The tariffs of the “resolver” vary: from several tens of thousands of rubles to several million dollars. They tell the story of one official arrested for a bribe of 5 million rubles. The lawyer went to prison and transferred the investigator’s offer: you pay $ 1 million, the article “Bribka”, for which you face ten years in prison, “interrupted” to “fraud”. On this prosecution, you can get much less, and if you plead guilty, you will go to a special order (that is, you will conclude a deal with the investigation) and get off with three or four years of the colony. The official refused: he was ready to give a million, but only in exchange for the termination of business and freedom.

“Lawyers know which of the colleagues is engaged in the so -called contractual relationship,” says lawyer Ruslan Koblev. - In all investigative divisions there are lawyers, who, as it were, on the "escape" with the investigator. And this is for the most part former employees of the same unit. You can take several cases and see that the confessions of the accused are written in the presence of the same defender. They often lure customers: they do not necessarily say that someone needs to bring money, they simply say that they used to work there as an investigator. If a person agrees to give confessions, they receive their fee and not the fact that they share with the investigator. And the investigator is already satisfied - he achieved recognition, revealed the case. The accused receives 4 years, and not 8 years old, as the investigator promised him, although in fact, there is no evidence that it was he who committed the crime. It doesn’t matter for such a lawyer: a person is to blame, it is not to blame whether his fault is proved or not. He sells the service, and everyone is happy. ”

The lawyer Marina Andreeva warns that with the “fixers” you must be careful: “In nine out of ten cases, a person who gives a bribe may not get what he pays for. Either the bribe will not reach the destination, or the “decisor” is misleading its client. ”

“In the political case, the“ solper ”lawyer will not help you,” says Olga Romanova, the leader of the Rus Sitting Movement. - He will not be able to guarantee you that his recorded agreements will reach and work with Judge Pupkin. I assume that the verdict in the case of Maxim Luzyanin is purely “Fixer”.* Luzyanin was previously convicted and, of course, had to know that he would be deceived. So, they promised him, he believed, but at some stage the agreement did not work. ”

Look for lawyers from human rights activists

“In a political case, you should not expect that the defender will bring something somewhere,” says the lawyer Agranovsky. - In such cases, one has to hope only for the law, which in this case is often trampled. You will need a qualified lawyer who knows how to write petitions, to expand thoughts. ”

Many of the experts surveyed by The New Times advise: people who have listed themselves at risk should conclude an agreement with a lawyer in advance. It costs from 1 thousand to 5 thousand rubles and gives confidence that if necessary, you will not be left without protection. If you are detained, you can always give the investigator the name of your lawyer and refuse to answer questions without him.

Experts advise: discuss the cost of lawyer services “on the shore”. For work at the preliminary investigation (that is, to the court itself) in a multi -episode case, where it is necessary to build a difficult protection line, Moscow lawyers are unlikely to work for less than 100 thousand rubles per circle. About the same costs the wages of the defender in court. Visits to the pre -trial detention center are a special cost item. There are lawyers who are asking for a separate fee for visiting the client in prison, and such a service costs from 3 to 10 thousand rubles for a visit. It also happens that relatives specially agree with a young lawyer who is not yet very expensive for him to go to the pre -trial detention center once a week and check if the prisoner is all right. Such lawyers are called "legs." They do not exercise legal protection, but simply become a reliable channel of communication with relatives.

“For the year of the investigation and several months of the court, we paid the lawyers comparable to the cost of the apartment in Finland,” says Natalya Zykina, whose nephew was accused of undermining the lamppost (Article 213 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation “Hooliganism”). “We were ready to give everything, and now I understand that those lawyers that we had at the very beginning of the journey were skillfully used.”

For protection in politically motivated cases, experts advise, it is best to contact human rights organizations that will help you with the selection of lawyers, and in critical cases when you do not have money for payment, they will help to raise money for a fee for a defender.

The head of the “For Human Rights” movement Lev Ponomarev says that among the lawyers whom he usually recommends, there are those who conduct political cases for free or for minimal money.

“The lawyer will be selected in Rosusznik,” advises the politician Alexei Navalny, the defendant of two criminal cases (and the witness for two more), who recently had to look for defenders for his parents and brother. ** - he will deal with you and you will be a priority. In addition to the actual legal work, he will have to call the pre -trial detention center, find out where you were transferred, do all the routine work, which has little to do with legal protection, but takes a lot of time. Often people believe that lawyers offer human rights activists are not competent enough and you need to look for a defender through friends, but this is not so: a lawyer hired by relatives is expensive, but he does not always have time to completely devote himself to your protection. ”

About 30 lawyers are currently working in the “Swamp case”, Rosuznik provides them to the accused. The head of this organization Sergei Vlasov told The New Times that, choosing the defenders, they use the recommendations of other human rights organizations, and also look for such lawyers who have experience in criminal cases, while it is not at all necessary that they previously participate in political processes.

"Prisoner of Bolotnaya" Nikolai Caucasian with his lawyer

 ** Do not look for a lawyer-"star" **

“It is very important that the lawyer who will defend you coincides with you morally, ethically and politically,” advises Olga Romanova. - That is, for example, you should not offer Dmitry Agranovsky, a man of left convictions, to protect the activist from the midst of liberals. And one more thing: do not take the "stars". They will have no time to protect you. Take not the most publicly known lawyers, but already respected in professional circles. ”

It is good if the lawyer is familiar with the practice of the European Court of Human Rights and already at the stage of the preliminary investigation and in court appeals all the violations that the prosecution committed.

“We know that in political cases, sentences are usually a foregone conclusion,” says Anna Stavitskaya lawyer. - Therefore, in the event of a conviction, you can conduct a case with an sight to file a complaint to Strasbourg. And if then a decision of the European Court is made that the right to a fair court was violated in relation to the applicant, this will become the basis for revising the case. ”

Beware of lawyers

Alexander Goldman, accused of one of the Yukos’s affairs ***, became a victim of unscrupulous lawyers, who, taking advantage of the fact that he was in jail and had no information about the circumstances of the case, "bred him for money."

“My wife paid to lawyers a monthly several thousand dollars, and they skillfully convinced her that they were working in my interests, and that only they could help me because I was guilty. I was able to “figure out” them only after two years in prison, when the investigation ended and I got acquainted with the case materials (Article 217 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation - the end of the investigation). Then I realized that these lawyers, in fact, did not work for me, they worked for my former partners who were interested in not testifying against them. By the way, these partners recommended me lawyers. I was in an information vacuum, and my wife alone was very difficult to understand the situation. "

How to figure out: does a lawyer betray you to whom you pay money, does he work for the investigation? “This becomes clear pretty quickly,” says Yana Yakovlev ****, the leader of the Business Solder movement. -Firstly, you notice that the lawyer is not interested in the course of the case, does not discuss anything with you. The second sign of an unscrupulous lawyer: you tell him that you noticed falsifications in the case, and he answers you that you, they say, do not understand anything in jurisprudence. This is ridiculous: any entrepreneur or person with intellect, who has served a year, will figure it out not only in his own business, but will also write complaints to other sites. And the third sign: the lawyer refuses your proposals to betray the case of publicity, turn to human rights defenders, but rather: he advises to sit quietly. ”

Do not be afraid of publicity

“A good lawyer is your like -minded person, you can develop a protection line with him. - says Natalya Zykina, who has been trying to prove the innocence of her nephew in the courts for 4.5 years. “If the lawyer does not have an assistant, then relatives must help him, carry documents to the court, order examinations, not sit back.” Zykina tells how they and the lawyer were looking for witnesses, interviewed them in order to prove in the court that the protocol for the seizure of material evidence was falsified by the investigator - as a result, the judge recognized this protocol unacceptable evidence. And although this did not affect the verdict, relatives are sure that they, together with lawyers, did everything that was possible.

It is generally accepted that in “custom -made” and politically motivated cases the verdict and the deadline are pre -preceded. Can a loud public defense affect the outcome of the case?

“The stronger the public resonance around the political affairs, the less the term may be,” lawyer Dmitry Agranovsky is sure. - I am absolutely convinced that if in the case of Pussy Riot, lawyers had not raised a big noise, then instead of a “two -step” would be a “five”. I have the feeling that the authorities have the attitude to “crush the opposition”, but to crush quietly. And we will resist as louder as possible. ”

Photos: Reuters, Evgeny Feldman