Cooperation between Young Lawyers- Way Forward

Eastern Partnership Countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine) have a striving system of young lawyers and growing tendency of establishing professional organisations. Exchange of experience fosters the young lawyers’ perspective, highlighting differences in professional approaches, stimulating reflections about their root causes, pros and cons.

As a concrete step forward and a key achievement in this area, the establishment of the Committee for Eastern Regional Cooperation (Regional Committee) was initiated jointly by the European Young Bar Association (EYBA) and the Council of Europe regional project “Strengthening the profession of lawyer in line with European standards in the Eastern Partnership countries”. The Committee was created with the aim to strengthen the regional cooperation for young lawyers and their associations from the Eastern European countries and to enhance their integration into the community of European legal professionals.

The Committee serves as a tool for: 

1. Systematically organising educational events
2. Creating specialised content: overviews of new legislation, interviews with top lawyers, discussion of notable court cases, career advice etc
3. Stimulating horizontal connections between young lawyers, such as commercial partnerships or online forums
4. Coordinating lobbying efforts aimed at improving legal standards
5. Fundraising
6. Developing further cooperation with European young lawyer associations.

Members of the Regional Committee continuously exchange and discuss on the topics of joint professional interest, share news, and also work on developing activities jointly with other EYBA members from EU jurisdictions. 

One of the recent examples of successful cooperation is a webinar "Crypto currency and professional challenges in the activity of lawyers" organised by the Committee for Eastern Regional Cooperation with the speakers from young lawyers   association of Armenia, Georgia, the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine in November 2022. The participants discussed ethical aspects of using cryptocurrency; national experience in the regulation of crypto assets; their search and freezing as well as sanctions policy on crypto assets. The webinar proved the importance of cooperation, on topics which bring more attention in recent times. 

The present article is prepared as part of the project “Strengthening the profession of lawyer in line with European Standards in the Eastern Partnership countries” funded by the European Union and the Council of Europe and implemented by the Council of Europe in their Partnership for Good Governance II 2019-2022.