EVERYONE SHOULD KNOW BOTH HIS RIGHTS AND OBLIGATIONS,

аccording to David Sargsyan, Head of Ameria Group Legal Practice, in an interview to Golos Armenii.

How would you evaluate current legal framework in Armenia. How friendly and comprehensible is it for the operating businesses? What on your opinion should be adjusted?

From the market viewpoint the legal framework in Armenia is rather developed. The main problem is the existing practice and the acting legislation non-compliance. My experience in this field is long enough to state that in many cases the practice doesn't only not comply, but have little relevance to the legislation which is an ‘Armenian disease' related to mentality which is hard to recover from. In Armenia there's a strong necessity to cultivate law basics awareness in all layers of the society. Each and every person be it an individual or a legal body should know both their rights and obligations.
Some people are very selectively law literate, that is focusing exceptionally on their own rights, hardly realizing that their rights are someone else's obligations and that each right spreads so far till the other person's rights begins. Even worse, the majority have no idea of legal regulation in each sphere.

However, today we are witnessing a quite useful legislation reforms process which needs to undergo, though, minor modernization. For instance, legal bodies state registration reforms that have been successfully finalized with implementation of a ‘single window' principle where anyone wishing to register his/her business may receive all the required documents and registration without fuss of applying to multiple offices. However, а number of cases is frustrating despite of the best intentions.

The legislation is full of complicated norms and rules impeding normal operation of businesses and forcing them to maintain extra-staff. For example, I can't understand the reasons for maintaining sealed hard copies of registers (labor legislation requirement) when they may be electronic. Actually I doubt their usefulness and necessity in terms of rights protection. I'm sure that many entities pay no attention to such details until visited by the Labor Inspection. Such cases create a certain environment for some officials' legal misconduct.

So if summarized, despite the Armenian legislation high rating we have a huge and tedious work to do to ensure compliance and further development of the system. What we need is active engagement of lobbyists to root harmful and useless rules out of legislation. By the way, we are thinking over initiating a number of such reforms through the relevant decision-making authorities.

- Please, tell us some significant or curious cases from your legal practice.

- Actually most of information about our clients is confidential and may not be disclosed. Curious cases often come when we finish our work done and a final product is already sent to the client, meanwhile the overall situation has unexpectedly changed, but the client hasn't had enough time to adjust the initial task. That is the reason why we discuss our mandate in every detail. Sometimes with the situation change we correspondingly adjust our negotiations approach. For example, we may easily ‘surrender' in the client's presence (as a rule we develop such scenario beforehand) when it comes to certain provisions in the agreement that may not necessarily be incorporated in the final document. Still we persist with more significant issues through concession. This is a good lesson for our clients, too, who today start to involve lawyers in the process of not big deals. Thus, the legal market though slowly still tends to improve the overall situation in the country in terms of legal unawareness.

- Do you remember any cases when your clients consulted with the Financial System Mediator? How effective is this institution in your opinion?

- Actually, we always try to negotiate with our clients directly. It seems more reasonable since pursuant to the law the Financial Mediator as a rule reviews minor cases in terms of financial claims. The whole initiative, though, is a step forward in the right direction. You don't need to go to the court and waste time. Wasting time in business is equal to wasting money. Anyway, this structure has to develop, mostly it should be quick in response to a growing number of application requests.

- How would you describe your relations with the clients? How often do they apply for legal consulting?

- First I'd like to say that we deal with a variety of clients, both local and foreign, and there are really serious players among the local ones. During the past years we have developed so called network relationships with many professional law firms both in the CIS republics and Western Europe. Moreover, we ourselves were the co-founders of a number of similar professional networks in CIS.

I should also mention that our startup legal advice regarding the business registration given to many of our clients later grew into a full scope of legal services. As a result, now we have made a good team of the so called court lawyers who handle most complicated civil and commercial issues, in particular, tax litigation and government, labor relations, intellectual property, etc. This includes seemingly minor but cases involving emotional tension, for example, related with Government priorities importance while land ownership registration. We endeavor to assist our clients in every possible way. What we leave outside of our interest scope is criminal and minor civil cases such as divorce proceedings, for example.

- So what would you advise to our readers?

- I would strongly advise to be more attentive to the existing legislation and especially to its development. Any person, be it an individual or a legal body should know their rights and obligations. Certainly, it won't be easy but this is what we -the professional lawyers are for. I would like to ensure you that we are always here to find most efficient and cost-effective way to cope with any complex issue.

By Ashot Aramyan