Review

The advocacy reform has largely influenced the legal regulation of access to the advocate’s profession in order to increase the credibility of advocacy. The paper deals with the place and role of access to the advocate's profession in the light of the reform of the advocacy, discloses the peculiarities of ensuring the right of a person to access the profession of advocate and ways of exercising this right. The author highlights the problematic aspects of balancing between the subjective rights of a person and the professional standards of selection for the profession of advocate.

It is necessary to standardize the issue of educational requirements for persons intending to become lawyers in accordance with the provisions of the Law of Ukraine "On Advocacy and Advocate’s Activity" in accordance with the Law of Ukraine "On Higher Education". Also, a new approach to determining the length of work experience in the field of law proposed by the authors of the draft law "On amendments to the Law of Ukraine" On Advocacy and Advocate’s Activity" requires its revision in the part of the list of persons intending to become lawyers and who, due to the availability of relevant experience , are exempted from the need to undergo an internship.

The purpose of the paper is to analyze the issues of access to the profession of lawyer through the prism of the reform of the Advocacy in order to identify the possibility of increasing the value of the profession of lawyer and preserve the balance between the observance of fundamental human and civil rights and professional standards of advocacy.

At the same time, the positive aspects of the proposals of the subjects of the legislative initiative regarding the determination of the characteristics of the qualification examination, the time of acquiring the status of a lawyer, the definition of the circle and the scope of the rights and obligations of persons intending to become lawyers, in particular: 1) the introduction of restrictions on access to the profession of a certain circle of persons who have proven themselves negatively during the exercise of other professional activities (judges, prosecutors, investigators, notaries); 2) the need to increase the requirements for the performance of advocacy activities, in particular, the strengthening of professional and moral-ethical requirements for persons who intend to obtain the status of a lawyer, etc. The article considers that such a person, if the lawyer's assistant, should be subject to the principles of confidentiality, the rules of lawyer's ethics, and the standards of the profession of lawyer as a whole.

Scientific research requires the question of determining the possibility of spreading to a person who intends to become a lawyer of moral, ethical, professional, educational, qualification, social requirements, rules and standards. Particular attention is also necessary to determine the categories of cases in which such persons may participate. The paper proposes the author's vision of the need to solve certain problems of access to the profession of lawyer as part of the process of reforming justice as a whole and a guarantee of further development of the lawyer community as a guarantee of the effective functioning of civil society and the rule of law.

Keywords: advocacy, access, internship, justice, qualification requirements, legal state.