How to vet an advocate or attorney-at-law before commissioning a substitution — a checklist

Entrusting a substitution means entrusting the client's case, a file covered by professional secrecy, and your own reputation — to a person we have often never laid eyes on. And yet a sizeable part of the market does exactly this on the strength of a profile photo and two sentences in a private message. So, before the file reaches a stranger's inbox, it is worth spending ten minutes on verification. Here is how to do it properly.

Step 1 — admission to the roll: the NRA and KIRP registers

The foundation of verification is checking whether the person is practising at all:

Advocates — the National Register of Advocates and Trainee Advocates

The register kept by the Polish Bar Council (rejestradwokatow.pl) lets you search for an advocate by surname and check: the bar, the registration number, the status (active / non-practising / suspended / struck off) and the firm's details. Any status other than "practising" is a red flag — a suspended person may not perform professional acts.

Attorneys-at-law — the KIRP search tool

The analogous search tool of the National Chamber of Attorneys-at-Law (rejestrradcow.pl) shows an attorney's admission, bar and status. In criminal matters it is worth additionally establishing whether the attorney-at-law is in an employment relationship — this determines their capacity to act as defence counsel.

Trainees

Trainees appear in the same registers; we check the bar, the year of training (the length of training determines which courts they may substitute before) and the supervising principal. After all, authorisation is granted within the supervisor–trainee relationship.

Step 2 — matching the data

Trivial, yet skipped: is the person writing from jan.kowalski.prawnik@gmail.com the same Jan Kowalski who appears in the register? In practice I would advise a simple triangulation: the register + the firm's website or a professional profile + contact via the number/address from those sources, not from the posting. Impersonating representatives is not a conspiracy theory — such cases do happen, and responsibility for letting a fraudster into the case falls on the party commissioning it.

Step 3 — conflict of interest

Before handing over any details of the case, you should give the substitute the parties to the proceedings and ask outright about any conflict. A local representative in a smaller centre may have represented the opposing party in another matter — in which case accepting the substitution is ruled out by the rules of professional ethics. Two lines in a message save you a disciplinary hearing.

Step 4 — experience in the given category of cases

Admission to the roll tells you that someone is a representative; it does not tell you that they know their way around CHF-loan, economic-crime or family cases. It is worth asking about their practice in the given category and — where evidence-taking is involved — about their readiness to study the file before the hearing. A provider who answers a question about the file with "it's enough that I show up" is fit, at most, for the delivery of a judgment.

Step 5 — professional liability insurance

Every practising advocate and attorney-at-law is covered by mandatory professional liability insurance. For standard substitutions it is enough to know that the cover exists; for cases with a high value in dispute there is nothing improper in asking about the guarantee sum. A professional will answer without taking offence.

Checklist to print

• Entry in the NRA/KIRP register — status "practising"
• Identity match (register ↔ contact ↔ law firm)
• For a trainee: year of training vs the court they are to appear before
• No conflict of interest (enquiry stating the parties)
• Experience in the case category
• For a criminal case: defence-counsel rights
• Arrangements in writing: scope, rate, report, payment

Summary

Vetting a provider is not a sign of distrust but an element of due diligence — the same diligence you owe to the client. Ten minutes with the register and three questions in a message eliminate 90% of the risks. The remaining 10% is eliminated by a process in which verification is built in, not bolted on.

On Wokanda.net we carry out the above checklist on the client's behalf: every provider passes verification of their admission and identity before seeing any instruction at all. The principal gets a representative who has been checked, not merely promised.

Post a substitution to a verified provider →