Why Are Company Lawyers Independent By Professional Duty? The Croatian Point Of View

There should be no difference between in-house lawyers and those in private practice. Both have a contractual relationship with the client ; the in-house lawyer has an employment contract while the outside counsel has a service contract. Both are providing the same service of advice on competition law. Both have a professional obligation to provide reliable legal assistance to the same client and on the end both are under the same client pressures. It is fair and reasonable that companies be allowed to freely choose their source of legal assistance. Being responsible to their shareholders and equally responsible for the welfare of their employees, managers may reasonably be expected to seek the best available advice. To restrict the scope of their choice is clearly unfair. We consider it necessary to regulate their position in order to improve their work, and thus the entire legal profession by establishing appropriate forms of their professional organization. It would be necessarily to regulate new, third Jurists Association, Croatian Chamber of corporate lawyers or amend the Legal Profession Act in the way of establishing a special class of corporate lawyers within the Croatian Bar Association. A third possibility would be to organize a new joint chamber with several classes (class of lawyers, notaries class, class-house counsel). By enabling a membership for corporative lawyers it would be possible to prevent the antagonism between the individual branches of the legal profession (the lawyers in the economy, lawyers in government, science).