History of legal advisor profession in Poland

In the history of the profession of legal advisor(lawyer) in Poland, there are three stages. The first began on 13th of December 1961 when the Council of Ministers issued a resolution on the legal state-owned enterprises, unions and state-owned banks requiring them to use only legal services of advisors(lawyer) employed by these units. After the adoption on 19th of December 1963 r a new restrictive Law on Advocates, that deprived advocates of the right to provide services to the above-mentioned units, that right was given only to legal advisors(lawyer). In the socialist system the profession of legal advisor(lawyer) in Poland became the representative of the socialist state and its right to the manage unit, where he was hired to oversee it in the public interest of the law.

The second stage began on July 6th, 1982, when the communist parliament passed a law on legal advisors specifying the rules for the legal services provided by legal advisors(lawyer) and organization of chambers of legal advisers. But still, the profession of legal advisor(lawyer) in Poland focused mainly on providing legal services to state and cooperative organizational units, although the legal advisor(lawyer) in Poland could also work for social organizations and companies with a share capital of state, as well as cooperative or social organizations. Local chambers of legal advisers in Poland were still deprived of two important powers: conducting preparation for the profession (because the application was organized and led by the district committees of arbitration) and the decisions on the entry into a profession of a legal advisor.

The beginning of the third stage is the adoption of the Law of 23 December 1988 on economic activity, which in art. 24 listed legal assistance as one of the types of economic activity provided to economic entities. The profession was released from the supervision of the National Commercial Arbitration as of 24 May 1989 local chambers were given the competence to carry out the application and make entries into the lists of advisors. The essential framework of the profession legal advisor(lawyer) in Poland has been established by so-called great amendment to the Law on Legal Advisors on 22nd of May 1997.