Lawyer Monthly Magazine - May 2019 Edition

70 SUPER LAWYERS MAY 2019 How Has the Bulgarian Legal System Progressed? We speak to Tcvetanka Boteva about how Bulgaria has progressed in terms of its legal system. She touches on how since the EU accession of Bulgaria, the national legislation has been in a process of harmonization with the EU legislation, yet how there remains to be a need for a more harmonized unity throughout the member states. In Civil Law, when a party cannot be duly served at the last known address, or cannot be represented for explicitly specified reasons, then a special legal assistant is assigned. In all other cases, legal assistance is not guaranteed, except in some cases specifically stipulated by some special law, where the issue is explicitly regulated “the party is represented by…”. Consequently, the client’s interest, my own interest, and last but not least, the evaluation of the client’s necessity of legal advice, are the leading factors. In many cases, the party seeking legal advice has already read too. In this respect, the time needed to set up and register a commercial company has been reduced to just a fewdays. These changes, however, drastically reduced theworkload of lawyers in connection with company incorporation. Nowadays anyone can register a company with minimal efforts – proprietors, their agents, accountants, etc. However, the cases of business- to-business indebtedness and insolvency of proprietors and commercial companies have become more common and more serious. It seems that the global crisis of 2008 heavily affected our country, and caused numerous companies and financial institutions to go bankrupt. It had an adverse effect on each sphere, on each profession. The client’s interest was slightly dimmed by the concern about whether the client would be able to pay the due legal fees, and, respectively, if my interest would be guaranteed. If the client is a company owner with ‘blocked’ accounts, then it is a really hard question… Natural person(s) also are a cause of concern: to them, the limit for using attorneys’ services is the use of the services of a legal assistant assigned to them, but such assistance is provided only in certain criminal procedures. In the past twenty-one years I have been working as a lawyer. I have been a member of the Plovdiv Bar (Plovdiv is the second biggest city in Bulgaria) and a free-lance barrister. During this period of 21 years, I have also been working with a team of technical assistants and trainees. The dynamics and pressure at work have been varied. The main focus, however, has invariably been on the client and the client’s interest. I have always aimed at providing the best possible protection to my clients and their rights, whatever the case. The time factor has also always been of great importance – clients are always in a hurry – to submit documents, to close procedures, to have their problems solved. At the beginning of my career, I remember having clients who, following the statutory procedures, set up their own companies in the UK. I remember them saying that the procedure in the UK was quite simple, straightforward, not requiring great funds – you just apply through the proper channels and then wait to have all the registration papers delivered by mail. After certain changes in the legislation and the introduction of the Commercial Register, this is already a fact in our country, information on the topic in newspapers or other media, has talked to a friend with a similar problem, or has found information on a similar case on the internet. So the challenges are quite big, and quite different from the time when I started my career in this field, equipped with a typewriter and a landline, whereas nowadays, every potential client who would like to use my services has already ‘informed’ him/herself using the phone in their pocket about ‘everything’. Now I have to be a lot more assertive to convince the client of my competence and of the www. lawyer-monthly .com