Lawyers in Latvia (members of the Bar), including those who have been suspended are obliged to improve their professional qualifications. Each Latvian lawyer will have to devote at least 16 academic hours to raising his/her qualification within one calendar year.
In order to ensure that every lawyer complies with this rule, Section 73, paragraph one of the Bar association law has been supplemented with Paragraph 6, which provides for a new type of disciplinary sanction – to send a lawyer for a qualification examination in case a lawyer fails to comply with this rule.
Further to the above, if a lawyer in Latvia fails to pass the qualification examination within one year from the application of the disciplinary sanction as described above, the lawyer shall be suspended from the performance of duties until the passing of the repeated qualification examination. A lawyer Latvia who does not pass the qualification examination shall re-take it not later than within six months (counting from the initial qualification examination).
The qualification test will be taken by the Bar Examination Commission established by the Minister of Justice. The qualification test will actually consist of the oral part of the lawyer‘s examination, in accordance with the regulations of the Cabinet of Ministers.
If a lawyer does not pass the qualification examination repeatedly, he or she shall be excluded from the Bar.
Additional Information
For more information, please contact NJORD Riga office at riga@njordlaw.lv, tel. +37167313315, @ Lawyer Latvia
NJORD is a Latvian law firm (advokātu birojs) with offices in Denmark, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. We have more than 200 employees of which about half are lawyers. We are a full-service business law firm with particular focus on litigation, intellectual property, corporate and commercial, immigration and criminal law (white collar crimes). Please visit us at www.njordlaw.com