Suppose that your application, or at least part of it, has successfully passed the first stage of the proceedings, i.e. has not been declared inadmissible. Suppose also that the application, or at least the part that has been admitted to the next stage, goes beyond the well-established case-law of the ECHR (applications that fall entirely within this case-law are dealt with in a simplified manner). In this case, the ECHR “communicates” the application to the respondent State and raises questions for the parties to the proceedings, i.e., the applicant and the respondent State. At this stage, the applicant must either appoint a qualified representative (if they do not already have one) or apply to the President of the Chamber examining the case for leave to represent themselves, providing evidence of their ability to handle their case before the ECHR.

A person must be sufficiently qualified to represent an applicant before the ECHR after the application has been communicated. According to Article 36 of the Rules of the ECHR, any lawyer entitled to practise in any member state of the Council of Europe is presumed to be sufficiently qualified. Does this apply to all lawyers, not just advocates? Indeed, it does. The ECHR has never required the applicant’s representative to have the status of an “advocate” under a national law (and an “advocate” cannot be defined without reference to a national law, which alone can determine under what conditions and in what manner a person can obtain the status of an advocate and what exactly that status entails in a given jurisdiction). Some misunderstandings arise from the difference between the two official texts of the Rules – in English and French. While the former uses the word “advocate”, the latter uses a word with the meaning of a “counsel” entitled to practise law, i.e. a “lawyer” (“un conseil habilité à exercer”). Accordingly, either the word “advocate” or the word “lawyer” has found its way into the texts of the Rules in other languages (and thus into other documents), depending on the language from which the Rules have been translated. Most curiously, the application form and the authority form in English contain the word “lawyer” but not “advocate”. Other persons may also be granted leave to represent applicants under Article 36 of the Rules. In practice, the ECHR grants such leave, in particular, to lawyers from other jurisdictions and to human rights defenders, including non-lawyers, as well as to human rights organisations, which decide who from the organisation’s staff will represent the applicant. It is, therefore, a question of having formal competence in law in general, recognised at the national level in any member state of the Council of Europe, or having specific expertise to represent applicants before the ECHR, recognised by the ECHR itself. Let’s take me as an example. On the one hand, of course, I always refer to my university education: I received a classical higher legal education in Russia, then studied international law at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, and Duke University, USA, trained in legal skills at Rutgers University, USA, and have been a Candidate of Juridical Sciences (equivalent to a doctorate) for more than 20 years. On the other hand, even if I did not have all that, the main thing is that I have 20 years of experience specifically with the ECHR: I prepared my first application in 2004, have worked on over 1,200 cases since then, have prepared hundreds of documents for the ECHR, and have represented and continue to represent dozens of applicants before the ECHR. Given this expertise, I am confident that I will continue to be recognised as sufficiently qualified to represent applicants before the ECHR, as has always been the case.

The specific content of my work as an applicant’s representative is as follows. I prepare and submit answers to the ECHR’s questions on the admissibility and merits of the applicant’s claims. These answers should take into account the arguments of the respondent Government, which are the first to submit their answers to the same questions. In addition, if necessary, I may prepare and submit my objections or additions to the statement of facts prepared by the Registry of the ECHR or the respondent Government. Together, these are known as the applicant’s written observations. If the applicant so wishes, I prepare and submit claims for just satisfaction, i.e. proposals for remedying the violations in money or in kind and claims for compensation for the costs and expenses incurred in defending against these violations at the national level and before the ECHR (including the costs of my services), supported by appropriate documents. As a rule, observations and claims should be written in English or French. I always prepare them in English. This work also includes correspondence with the applicant (alternatively, another person acting for the applicant may communicate with me), with translation to and from the language of their choice. I prepare all translations using DeepL, a translation service based on convolutional neural networks widely deployed in my multilingual work. I ask the applicant clarifying questions and request additional documents, explain the different options of arguments and claims that can be submitted when the applicant has a choice, and guide the applicant through the examination of the case before the ECHR. Finally, I receive all correspondence on the case from the ECHR, send it to the applicant for reference and respond to any queries from the ECHR.

The cost of my basic services in representing an applicant before the ECHR is €1,000. This price does not depend on the respondent State, which may be any member State of the Council of Europe or Russia, the number of claims, the volume of the case file or the languages in which it may be written. I work with documents in any of the 37 official languages of these countries. Individual documents may also be in other languages. Suppose you provide documents in the form of photocopies or scans (i.e. files containing “images” of document pages). In this case, they should be legible so that, if necessary, optical character recognition software can convert them into machine-readable text for translation into another language and for quick and efficient searches for important information. You should not provide translations of the original documents into another language unless these translations are already part of the case file. I will translate everything myself. How is this possible? Artificial intelligence-based programmes are now so advanced that they allow me to work comfortably with foreign languages that I do not speak, at least not fluently. I have worked with Norwegian in a case involving a dispute with the tax authorities, with Azerbaijani in a case where an applicant was challenging his inclusion on a wanted list, with Swedish in a case where a relative was fighting for contact with the child, with Ukrainian in a case of unfairness in the determination of criminal charges against the applicant, with Serbian in a case involving unpredictable interpretations of criminal law on the basis of which the applicant was charged with a criminal offence. At no time did I encounter difficulties, even when the substance of the claims involved language issues, as in the Norwegian and Serbian cases.

However, only if the total amount of all necessary work falls within 5 hours will I prepare the most comprehensive answers to the questions of the ECHR, objections to the arguments of the authorities of the respondent State, corrections and additions to the essential facts of the case, and claims for just satisfaction. Suppose 5 hours is not enough. In this case, you will receive at least minimally reasoned written observations with answers to all the questions raised by the ECHR and claims for just satisfaction, if you wish to submit them. What would have to be sacrificed in this case? Three things can often save time. First, I can give up studying the case-law of the ECHR in terms of judgments and decisions in so-called cases of medium importance. One should almost always study judgments and decisions in so-called key and high-importance cases, which concern the kind of violations the ECHR has raised its questions about and the admissibility criteria that are problematic for this case. These are judgments and decisions which contribute significantly to the development, clarification, and modification of the case-law of the ECHR. On the other hand, judgments and decisions of the so-called third level of importance are never studied because they are based solely on the application of existing case-law and are of no interest as sources of law. The judgments and decisions of medium importance, which are more numerous than those of key and high importance, do not contribute significantly to the case-law but go beyond the mere application of existing case-law. It is among the judgments and decisions of medium importance that small but valuable nuances may be found for a particular case. In principle, however, these nuances can be neglected if saving time is more critical. Secondly, I can limit as much as possible (or even eliminate) the work with the case file and stick to the facts as the Registry of the ECHR states them according to its perception of the case file. Suppose the drafting of the facts is left to the respondent Government. In this case, this element of the work is more problematic to sacrifice, but it can still be minimised as far as possible if the aim is to save time. For obvious reasons, it also has a direct impact on the possibility of preparing the most comprehensive corrections and additions to the essential facts of the case. These are the circumstances, to be established on the basis of the case file, which are similar or comparable to those circumstances the presence or absence of which, according to the case-law of the ECHR, leads to the conclusion that violations have (or have not) been committed and that the admissibility criteria are (or are not) satisfied. Finally, I may refuse to analyse the practice of the national authorities, in particular of the courts, even if an alleged violation concerns shortcomings in the national law, which to a large extent is developed precisely through its application by the national authorities, whose decisions thus turn out to be the sources of national law potentially capable of confirming violations or compliance with the admissibility criteria. Of course, I will always explain exactly what I need to do to carry out the most comprehensive work in a particular case if more than 5 hours are required, and how long it will take. The cost of any work I do is always my estimate of the time required multiplied by a rate of €200 per hour. Accordingly, if you wish, you can always pay extra for this work and get the most I can do for you. Alternatively, you can ask me to represent the applicant on an hourly rate basis, rather than on a fixed fee basis. Just let me know in the field for comments when you order this service. What if a representative is needed for several applicants in the same case? Suppose all these applicants are victims of the same alleged violations. In that case, this will not have a significant impact on the scope of the work, and, therefore, the cost will remain the same. The situation needs to be assessed if several applicants are victims of different alleged violations. Sometimes, all the work required for even a few applicants can be completed within 5 hours. In other cases, however, I may need more time to prepare even minimally reasoned written observations answering all the questions raised by the ECHR. You should contact me as described below, indicating in the field for comments on your request that you seek representation for more than one applicant. I will look at the case file and reply whether the work required to present them falls within 5 hours.

I can also prepare the applicant’s written observations and claims for just satisfaction in the name of another person who represents or intends to represent the applicant before the ECHR. For example, some lawyers and advocates prefer to instruct me to prepare texts they sign and submit in their names. The cost of my work in such a case remains the same. If you are interested in this option, please let me know in the field for comments.

You can ask me to represent the applicant by completing and submitting the request form directly from this page. Within 24 hours, I will send you a signed contract in English (sometimes with a translation into another language for your convenience). Once you have received the contract, you should sign it online, directly in your browser or mobile device, using Adobe’s Acrobat Sign service, where authentic copies of all signed contracts are stored and always available to the parties (no additional software installation required). Then, the applicant and I should sign an authority form and send it to the ECHR. Does the applicant’s signature need to be authenticated? No. All the applicant has to do is make a stroke on the authority form I prepare, which can be printed anywhere. The applicant’s signature can be obtained by anyone, anywhere, under any circumstances. Sometimes, the conditions under which a signature is obtained are such that it doesn’t even look like the applicant’s usual signature. But if the applicant confirms that it is their signature, it is theirs. That is the ECHR’s approach. When the application is added to my account on eComms, the ECHR’s service for electronic communication with applicants’ representatives, I will inform you. When the ECHR sends me the respondent Government’s written observations and invites me to submit the applicant’s written observations and claims for just satisfaction, I will start doing all the work described above. Of course, if the ECHR requests anything before then, I will inform you, and we will prepare a response.