Legal Profession in Croatia
Legal Profession
The Law on the Legal Profession of the Republic of Croatia was adopted in 1994. This Law regulates the main principles of the legal profession in Croatia. It prescribes the exclusive and solely right of Attorneys to provide legal assistance. Furthermore, it regulates the organization and the activity of the legal profession as an autonomous and independent service of providing legal assistance to all natural persons and legal entities in order to realize and protect their rights and legal interests.
According to the Law, an attorney must join the Croatian Bar Association, to have the right to practice law as an attorney. Therefore, there are over four thousand attorneys that are currently members of the Croatian Bar Association, what means that there are over four thousand attorneys in Croatia which can provide legal assistance.
Attorneys that Croatia are allowed to provide legal services can provide legal services individually, in joint law offices or in law firms. Also, an attorney is allowed to employ other attorneys as well. Law firms can be established as public trading companies or as limited liability companies. In practice, it is more common for law firms to be established as limited liability companies. In addition to attorneys, trainee attorneys can also provide legal assistance, under supervision, on the instructions and responsibility of the attorney.
Attorneys/Lawyers, in particular, can give legal advice, to draw up documents; contracts, wills, declarations, draw up requests, petitions, proposals, regular and extraordinary legal remedies and other submissions, and represent parties.
In order to get a permission to work in Croatia as an attorney, it is required to have professional insurance. Attorneys who provide legal service individually are professionally insured for an amount exceeding EUR 100.000,00, while law firms must be insured for an amount exceeding EUR 1.190.000,00.
Attorneys provide legal assistance on the basis of a mandate or authorization. Attorneys are mandatory to provide legal assistance conscientiously, in accordance with the Law on the Legal Profession, the Constitution of the Republic of Croatia, other laws, statutes and other general acts of the Croatian Bar Association and the Code of Attorney Ethics.
Finally, it is important to point out that attorneys are obliged to keep as a attorney's secret everything that the client has entrusted to him or that he has learned in other ways while representing the client.
