I always wanted to be an advocate! Back in school I adored old films in which cultured, dignified elderly advocates delivered beautiful, righteous speeches. Between lessons, during the breaks, I would run to the bookshop next door, pull law books off the shelves and try to grasp the mysterious words: criminal offence, measure of punishment, article such-and-such. Those words and terms — whose meaning, of course, I did not fully understand — sounded to me like music. Detective novels, of which there were not so many back then, I read to tatters.

After school I tried to enrol in the law faculty of the Taras Shevchenko Kyiv State University. My first collision with reality proved harsh: I did not turn from an applicant into a student — I fell short by a single point. To say I was upset would be to say nothing at all. It felt as though life was over. One of my aunts consoled me: «What kind of lawyer are you, if after the first setback your paws go up? Then you don't really want to be an advocate».

To prove the opposite, to test myself, I took a job as a court-session secretary at the Brovary court. Within a year I understood what hard work it is — and not only for the advocate, but for the judge and the prosecutor too. Yet the romance of the advocate's profession beckoned irresistibly — I applied to the university six times! I don't even know what exactly turned the tide: my stubbornness, or simply chance — but I was admitted to the correspondence department of the law faculty.

While I studied, I kept working at the court, now as a bailiff. Then I moved to the post of legal counsel at the Kyiv «Oblrembutbudtrest», where I worked for four years. And all that time a certain feeling of dissatisfaction never left me. It looked like work in my field, yet, unfortunately, it was too — how shall I put it — paper-bound. More and more often I recalled my work at the court.

Yes, in those days the pay of an advocate and of a legal counsel was roughly the same. But it isn't only about the money. At the trust, as I've said, one hardly ever worked with people. I drew up contracts and deeds and checked that they were in order. On the whole it was ordinary paperwork. Yet I longed to help real, living people. Even as a court-session secretary I would lose myself in the advocates' speeches; I saw how they strove to prove the innocence of those they defended in criminal cases, or how in civil proceedings they stood up for a person's rights whenever those rights had been violated.

Over twelve years of work at the court I already had some notion of an advocate's work. But, I confess, I never suspected it would be so hard.

The thing is, it is very difficult to establish contact with a person. Everyone is different, and their demands differ too. Each has their own idea of the advocate and their work. And you are obliged to give legal assistance only within the bounds of the law. Say a person has committed a crime. You tell them what punishment the relevant article provides. And they declare: «I paid you money — let them release me!». You explain again that, under such-and-such an article, the measure of punishment is this. What they paid for was your work, your time spent studying the case, taking part in investigative actions, and so on. Unfortunately, not everyone understands that an advocate's help is only legal help.

Working with a client, you must be a subtle psychologist. Listen carefully; find out whether he admits his guilt or not, whether he is telling the truth or trying to hide something to look better. An advocate must be trusted like a doctor. If a person has not committed a crime, it is precisely the advocate who must gather all the proof of their innocence. It is the advocate's right to collect all the relevant information and present it to the court.

One must always find out what the person wants. Sometimes a client's claims are unfounded — and then this has to be explained to them clearly. If you cannot reach an understanding with a client on certain questions of defence tactics, working together is impossible. If you see that a person is lying, it isn't worth working with them, for you would have to look for evidence where there is none. Everything told to an advocate is a secret — as at confession. Lying simply makes no sense. The more truthful the information an advocate receives, the better their chances of finding the right line of defence.

An advocate who refuses to defend a person who has come to them for help does not live up to their high calling, no matter what crime that person has committed. But I confess that I personally agree only in exceptional cases to defend those who have raped minors. As a woman, as a mother, it is very hard for me to take on such cases. Of course, an advocate is obliged to help any person, for their guilt can be proven only in court. Even if the investigation insists that this person is a criminal, only the court can determine the degree of guilt.

First, an advocate cannot defend several people in the same case if their positions differ — when each denies his own guilt and claims the other is to blame. As a rule, the advocate signs the defence agreement with the relatives. When, at the first meeting with those I am to defend, I see discrepancies in their testimony, I may defend only one of them. Second — the case where you have advised the plaintiff and then wish to defend the defendant. Third, the defender cannot be someone who took part in the case as an attesting witness or a witness who must be questioned, nor a relative of the investigator or of the criminal-investigation officer involved in the case. Though that is more a legal matter than an ethical one.

And ethics is a far subtler, more delicate thing, if you will. To my mind — there was a case when several of us advocates were defending the accused, and our colleague was representing the injured party. Seeing that the injured party drew more attention and sympathy, he began allowing himself to make remarks to the advocate of the other side. Not in the courtroom, of course, where the judge would surely have reprimanded him and filed a report with the disciplinary commission. But he took to insulting and humiliating his own colleague — perhaps to demoralise her. Such conduct is unworthy. It is the starkest, most inadmissible example of a breach of legal ethics.

At present the criminal code provides for liability for denying a meeting between the accused and their advocate. Earlier it was hard, because the prosecutor's office and the police could obstruct it in every way. Sometimes a defender simply could not find the person he was defending. We were forced to drive all over the city looking for our clients. For instance, they say he is in the remand prison. You arrive — and he isn't there; he's supposedly somewhere in Ivankiv. You drive there — and again you don't find your client, and the whole thing starts over.

Another, no less serious problem that troubles all advocates today is the cumbersome pass system, in which very few people have the right to sign a permit for a visit. Say I, as the defender, need to meet a client. The criminal case is with the investigator, so the accused is, of course, listed under that prosecution investigator. But to get the visit, you have to go to the head of the police department where the accused is held. Already holding the investigator's permission for the meeting, you must still obtain that chief's authorisation — and he may not be in. And the advocate has to wait. And waits, sometimes for hours… You can enter the temporary detention facility only until 6 p.m. If you don't make it, tomorrow you must start all over again.

But even once the signature has been obtained and you have arrived at the temporary detention facility, you must wait again — because either the detainees are being taken away, or there's an inspection, or some other reason is named. As a result, the advocate wastes an incredible amount of time before reaching the client. Yet from the moment an advocate enters a case, they have the right to meet the person they defend even five times a day. Imagine signing a pass five times with the investigator and the police chief! And that chief may have no idea about this case or this person! But each time you are obliged to sign the pass, since without that permit you cannot enter the temporary detention facility. Sometimes one gets the impression it is done on purpose — that the situation in which a detainee is left for a long time without legal help, without the chance to consult anyone, is created artificially.