Lawyers for CHANGE Association (LCA) is a nongovernment organisation of practicing Bulgarian lawyers and represents a nonprofit association registered under company file No 827 as docketed by the 4th panel of the Sofia City Court, company section for 2010 on January 20, 2011.
The main objectives of the association and the means for achieving them were specified in the LCA Statutes at the end of 2010 by its founders.
The members of the Association have concrete proposals and projects for change, described in detail in their Programme for the Development and Management of the Sofia Bar Association (SBA).
Public defence of the rights and dignity of the Bulgarian lawyers, promoting and maintaining a high prestige of the lawyers profession, active engagement of lawyers in the activity of the Bar Association, supporting lawyers encountering financial difficulties and supporting lawyers who are subjected to unjustified forced measures are among the Associations objectives.
Important highlights in the organizations activity are the dramatic enhancement of the professional qualification of lawyers particularly in the sphere of European community law and topical issues of the European integration of the new member states. Transparency in the activity and democratisation of the managing bodies of the Bar in Bulgaria and the implementation of good European practices will be pursued as the Associations objectives in the next three or five years.
Lawyers for CHANGE also aims at establishing contacts with kindred Bulgarian and international organizations and barristers colleges and at participating in national and international events associated with enhancing the qualification and the European prestige of the Bulgarian lawyers.
The need to establish such an organization emerged when a considerable number of lawyers in Sofia realized that the prestige of lawyers profession had sharply declined as a consequence of objective and radical changes in public life caused by the exceptional normative dynamics related to the countrys accession to the European Union and last but not least by the numerous subjective errors and irreversible shortcomings in the activity of the acting leadership of LCA and the Higher Lawyers Council (HLC) in Bulgaria after 2002.
The unjustified wasting of public funds on the part of the previous leadership as well as its refusal to allow its activity over the past 7-8 years to be audited play a catalyzing role. The rude style of chairing the meetings of the General Assembly and the total lack of transparency of important decision making by the LCA Council add to the sad picture of reality.
Following numerous discussions in cafes and offices, provoked by the consecutive forceful actions of the previous leadership of the barristers college which led to declaring the regular elections of a new leadership illegal in late January 2010, a group of lawyers of the LCA decided to initiate changes in the objectives, style and methods of the leadership of the biggest barristers college including half of all lawyers in the country hoping to break up with the totalitarian habits and obsolete thinking of the previous leaderships and to bring lawyers profession to the European highway of development.
Lawyer Mario Topchiisky was elected chairman, lawyer Hristo Hristov was elected deputy chairman and lawyer Ivailo Danov was elected secretary.
Vladimir Denchev who is an extremely experienced lawyer is the indisputable unifier of the reformist lawyers.
ddress: 2 B Tsar Assen St. Region: BG41 Southwestern
Post code: BG-1000 Phone/Fax/Phone secretary: +359 2 980-80-17
City of Sofia
BULGARIA Website: http://www.lawyers4changes.eu
