Confidential cooperation of a lawyer with law enforcement agencies: legal restrictions and guarantees

The article provides a legal analysis of the nature of confidential cooperation between lawyers and law enforcement agencies at the stage of pre-trial investigation and during operational and investigative activities. It analyzes regulatory restrictions and professional guarantees aimed at protecting attorney-client privilege, attorney independence, and ensuring the right to defense. The article substantiates the inadmissibility of involving attorneys in covert actions due to the risk of violating the principle of confidentiality. The purpose of the article is to study the legislative restrictions on confidential cooperation between lawyers and law enforcement agencies, as well as to justify the inadmissibility of lawyers’ participation in operational-investigative measures and covert investigative (search) actions at the stage of pre-trial investigation due to the need to comply with the principles of attorney-client privilege, professional independence, and ensuring the right to defense. It is concluded that a lawyer’s immunity from covert cooperation with agencies conducting operational-investigative or covert activities at the stage of pre-trial investigation can be considered a separate form of legal protection aimed at ensuring his professional independence. In a broad sense, this form of immunity is part of a general system of guarantees designed to exclude the possibility of influencing the defense attorney as a representative of the defense. Confidential cooperation between a lawyer and law enforcement agencies within the framework of operational-investigative activities and during covert investigative (search) activities at the stage of pre-trial investigation is legally and ethically unacceptable, contrary to the principles of the legal profession, in particular the principle of maintaining attorney-client privilege, professional independence of lawyers, and ensuring the right of individuals to defense. Given the specific nature of the profession, the participation of a lawyer in covert activities as a confidant is incompatible with the requirements of maintaining attorney-client privilege, the principles of the rule of law, the standards of the European Court of Human Rights, and national judicial practice. Therefore, it is necessary to strengthen mechanisms for monitoring compliance with established legal restrictions, preventing pressure on lawyers, and introducing additional institutional guarantees for the protection of the professional independence of lawyers in criminal proceedings.