MOSCOW, December 3 (RAPSI) – Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a bill setting so-called fees for lawyers starting March 2020 into law. The document’s version has been published on the official website of legal information.

Amendments would be introduced into the legal practice and advocacy legislation.

So-called success fees are provisions of agreements between clients and lawyers charged for a lawyer's services depending on the results of the provided legal assistance. However, the law sets certain limits on the payment of such a fee: the payment is not to be made in administrative or criminal cases, according to the Chair of the Committee on State Building and Legislation of the State Duma Pavel Krashninnikov.

The adopted amendments also envisage the introduction of tests conducted with the use of the unified automated information system as the first stage of the bar examination in order to prevent improper practices registered in certain regions of the country.

The Council of the Federal Chamber of Lawyers of Russia is to determine the procedures governing the provision of legal assistance on the part of lawyers appointed to act as defendants’ representatives in criminal cases by investigative authorities or courts with the use of the unified automated information system. This procedure has been already successfully employed in a number of regions, according to the deputy.

Lawyers, disbarred because of professional improprieties, are not to be representatives in courts, the document, which contains a large number of other amendments concerning the activities of lawyers and Councils of regional Chambers of Lawyers and the Federal Chamber of Lawyers, reads.

It is planned that the law is to be enacted in March 2020; certain provisions are to be put in force in 2021 and 2022.