Austrian Bar Association

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The Austrian Bar Association (ÖRAK) is the umbrella organization of the nine bar associations in Austria to protect the rights and affairs of the Austrian legal profession as a whole and to represent them . The ÖRAK is a public corporation .

history

In order to gain more influence and better represent and coordinate the members, the individual Austrian chambers of advocates (bar associations) joined forces and initiated the Austrian Advocate Conference (political association), which first took place in Vienna in October 1875. It was decided to create a permanent deputation. The third Advokatentag took place in Graz in 1877 and the fourth Advokatentag in Brno in 1878 .

From these advocacy days, the " Permanent Representative Assembly of the Austrian Bar Association " (StVV), which is part of the association " Österreichischer. Austria " , developed through the " Permanent Delegation of the Austrian Bar Association " (1922, a collective committee of all Bar Associations, consisting of the individual presidents and a number of delegates) Bar Association "was converted.

On September 29, 1972, the Austrian Bar Association was constituted as an association in Innsbruck and on November 8, 1973 it became a public corporation . President is Walter Schuppich elected, which he remains the next 20 years.

In order to liberalize access to the legal profession, the doctorate as a prerequisite for admission to the legal profession was abolished on March 2, 1978. The EEA Lawyers Act, which came into force on January 1, 1994, was another step in liberalization. Adjustments and modernizations were then also brought about by the Lawyer Professional Law Amendment Act, among other things the practice of the legal profession in the form of a limited liability company (GmbH) was allowed. As a result, lawyers were allowed to advertise for the first time (from October 1, 2001).

With the amendment to the professional law of January 1, 2010, trainee lawyers were accepted as members of the respective bar association.

construction

The corporation is made up of the nine Austrian bar associations and is, insofar as the Austrian bar association is affected in its entirety or beyond the sphere of activity of an individual bar association, to safeguard its rights and affairs and to represent it. The organs of the ÖRAK are the Representative Assembly, the Presidential Council and the Presidium . The ÖRAK general secretariat is located in Vienna .

  • The President of the Austrian Bar Association represents the ÖRAK externally and executes the resolutions of the Representative Assembly, the President's Council and the Presidium. If the President is unable to attend or at the request of the President, he will be represented by the person appointed by him or, in the absence of such a commission, by the Deputy President responsible according to the ÖRAK's rules of procedure.
  • The presidium of the ÖRAK consists of the president and the three presidential deputies. The Presidium has overall responsibility for all tasks that are not reserved for the Representative Assembly or the Council of Presidents. The President and his deputies are elected by the Assembly of Representatives for a term of three years.
  • The presidential council consists of the presidents of the individual bar associations. A bar association chairs the presidential council for six months at a time. The Presidential Council is responsible for establishing the principles of professional ethics and the legal policy to be followed by the Austrian legal profession and for monitoring the activities of the Presidium. Members are the presidents of the nine bar associations.
  • The delegates sent by the committees of the bar associations form the representative assembly. The representative assembly decides on the budget and issues guidelines in accordance with Section 37 RAO. It elects the ÖRAK President, his three deputies and the auditors of the Austrian Bar Association. The number of delegates depends on the number of members of the respective bar association. The Bar Association is entitled to one delegate for every 150 members or part thereof.

Rupert Wolff has been President since September 2011. His deputies are Bernhard Fink, Marcella Prunbauer-Glaser and Armenak Utudjian. Honorary Presidents are Klaus Hoffmann and Gerhard Benn-Ibler. As of December 31, 2019, 6,667 lawyers (98 of which are established European lawyers) were registered in Austria and represented by the ÖRAK.

tasks

In addition to actively assessing the law and passing resolutions on professional standards, the areas of responsibility also include the preparation of the annual perception report (Section 55 RAO). In addition, the ÖRAK keeps the directory of lawyers and is the publisher of the lawyers' journal , organizes regular conferences such as the Austrian Lawyers ' Day and invites you to the annual European Presidents' Conference in Vienna. Innovations such as electronic legal transactions, the attorney's ID with digital signature or the "Archivium" digital document archive are just as much a part of the services as the establishment of an Austria-wide on-call hotline for arrested suspects (see also legal on-call service ).

ÖRAK and Europe

As a member of the CCBE (Conseil des Barreaux de la Communauté Europeénne), the ÖRAK is actively involved in the development of legal professional law in the EU, but is also involved in advising on European legislation. ÖRAK has had its own representation in Brussels for several years .

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The following explanations are taken from the comprehensive historical compilation of the Styrian Bar Association on November 1, 2013.
  2. ↑ Statute see GZ 1875, 279 f.
  3. ^ This dissolved itself on October 25, 1918.
  4. ↑ At the suggestion of Leo Kaltenbäck, longstanding President of the Styrian Bar Association
  5. ↑ Amendment to the Lawyers' Act 1973 - this resulted in the legal anchoring of the umbrella organization " Austrian Bar Association " as a public corporation.
  6. ↑ Manfred Stimmler: Chronicle: A great man at the right time. Retrieved February 13, 2017 .
  7. ↑ RECHTSANWALTSKAMMERTAG, opinion. Retrieved February 11, 2017 .
  8. ↑ Federal Law Gazette No. 21/1993.
  9. ↑ Came into force on June 1, 1999, Federal Law Gazette I No. 71/1999.
  10. ↑ http://www.rechtsanwaelte.at/kammer/oerak/praesidium/
  11. ↑ According to Art. 2 § 9 RAO, the first observation report was to be drawn up on January 1st, 1975.