On February 1 of last
year I took three flights to go half way around the
world to the Republic of Georgia. At the time, like
most Americans, I knew very little about the country.
I thought of it as a former territory of Russia but
did not know precisely where it was located and believed
that like Russia it must be unbearably cold in February.
I hadn't chosen to go
to Georgia. I had volunteered to spend a year in any
country the American Bar Association would send me to
as part of its Central European and Eurasian Legal Initiative
(CEELI) program. I wanted a break from the private practice
of law and wanted to spend some time living and working
as an attorney in a foreign country. Joining CEELI seemed
like a way I could accomplish these goals.
CEELI is a program of
the ABA that has as its mission the promotion of the
rule of law in emerging democracies. It started by placing
experienced lawyers in countries that had once been
part of the Soviet Union to help build legal institutions
such as bar associations, law schools, and an independent
judiciary. CEELI is primarily funded by grants from
USAID.
My duties in Georgia included
doing an in-depth assessment of the legal system from
the point of view of trial lawyers, teaching trial advocacy
skills, assisting in the development of a national bar
association, and helping draft an ethical code and disciplinary
rules for lawyers.
Before leaving, I read
up on the country. The Lonely Planet guide said that
if you were staying in the country any length of time
it was recommended to obtain hostage insurance, but
to be sure and not tell anybody about it. I was advised
to bring a warm coat and sturdy shoes because the interiors
of buildings would not be heated and warned that electricity
and water were often cut off.
I was fortunate that my
daughter had school friends from Little Rock Central
High whose parents were from Georgia, and their families
in Georgia took me in and treated me like family. I
lived in Tbilisi, the capital of the country with a
million people. It is nestled on the sides of hills
and was once considered a gem of a city, but since the
demise of the Soviet empire it has fallen into disrepair.
I stayed in a large, beautiful Soviet-era apartment
that a family rented for income they needed to survive.
I had a housekeeper from Minghrelia (the western part
of Georgia) who was a wonderful cook. I went to work
daily in an office that was in the center of the city
near the national museum, national theater, and government
buildings. I got to work by walking several miles, or
by taking ramshackle, Soviet-era taxis or shabby, private
minibuses. The traffic was frightening. The streets
were in disrepair and full of cars. I had to be eternally
vigilant since cars had never yielded to pedestrians.
I feared that I would get killed by a car running over
me while I was standing on the sidewalk. I wondered
how older, feeble people who could not be alert every
second could survive.
Georgia is a small country
bordered by the Caucuses on the north, with Russia,
Ingushetia, and Chechnya on the other side of these
mountains. It is bordered on the West by the Black Sea,
the south by Turkey and the east by Armenia. It is an
unbelievably beautiful country filled with mountains.
It has a temperate climate and is hot in the summer.
In the winter I was there, there was snow, but it was
not severely cold and spring was lush and green. It
is an ancient Christian country that seems like a cultural
cross between Middle Eastern and European. I think it
is unique and fascinating. The people are warm, fun
loving, volatile, unbelievably hospitable, and anarchic.
They love to dance and sing. The food is delicious,
the wine better. The women are reputed to be and are
beautiful and exotic looking. In the winter everyone
wore dark clothing. But in the spring, the women blossomed
with colorful sundresses, headscarves, and sandals.
A common joke and an anecdote
illustrate traits attributed to Georgians. First the
joke: an American tourist takes a taxi from the airport
to his hotel. The driver runs a red light. The American
says, "Why did you run that red light?" The
Georgian says, "Because I am a brave Georgian driver."
They come to a green light, and the Georgian driver
stops. "Why did you stop?" says the American."
"Because another brave Georgian driver may be coming
the other way." The anecdote is relating what happened
to me. One day I was with a young Georgian lawyer in
a café. We were speaking English. An elderly
lady came up and asked for money in Georgian. I gave
her a small sum. She walked away and then returned,
handing the coins back to me. She said to my friend:
"I am sorry to take her money because she is a
guest in our country."
With the collapse of the
Soviet Union, Georgia became independent but soon was
gripped by civil war. Daily life was harsh and terrible
until recently, with widespread deprivation, violence
and poverty. Now there is more prosperity, but things
are still very dire. There is little economic infrastructure.
There are hardly any jobs except with foreigners, and
people are either desperate on one end of the spectrum
or uneasy on the other. The new government of Michel
Sakashvilli (who is an American-educated lawyer) is
not that stable, and there are questions and misgiving
as to whether his majority party truly respects democratic
ideals and the rule of law. Alcohol abuse and drug use
among the young are prevalent because opportunities
for them are few.
Let me tell you of my
first glimpse of Georgian lawyers. And this was to be
typical of most encounters with them. I had gone to
work at the ABA office. There were two Americans working
there besides me and a staff of young Georgian lawyers.
That afternoon at 5 p.m. there was to be a meeting of
some of the leading lawyers in Tbilisi to plan for the
inaugural meeting for the new bar association. Edvarde
Schevardnaze, when he was president in 1999, had signed
a law providing for a national bar association for advocates,
to be formed by March 2005. (And so, when I got there,
time was running out to do so.)
The meeting was around
a big table. Twenty-five or so young men and women came
in, all with cell phones that they promptly put down
on the table in front of them. No one came on time.
It soon became evident that a cell phone call took precedence
over what was going on at the meeting. No one ever declined
to answer a ringing phone and carry on a conversation.
(This would be true for every meeting including the
inaugural bar association convention. This was true
of judges on the bench and lawyers in the courtroom-
phone calls took precedence over what was going on in
front of people.)
There began a discussion
of how a bar association charter would be written and
then adopted. Soon, the majority of the lawyers were
arguing all at once at the top of their lungs. The leader
of one faction stalked out, only to return. Women were
just as vocal and vociferous as the men. After an hour
and a half, no consensus or decision had been reached
on anything. This was the way almost every meeting went,
with the ABA finally threatening to pull funding for
the inaugural bar convention if there wasn't progress
made on how the meeting would be run, who would preside,
and how a charter would be written and adopted.
During this time, I traveled
around the country with a driver, an old Mercedes, and
a young Georgian lawyer to assist and interpret. I was
interviewing judges, lawyers, and journalists for the
assessment of the legal system I was charged with preparing.
I loved doing this. I learned that under the Soviet
system, law was considered a very lowly profession.
Now, this is changing, and lawyers are gaining more
respect. Because the country is so poor, very few lawyers
can earn a living practicing this profession, as no
one has money to pay them. With one or two exceptions,
law offices are primitive and barren. There are few
computers. Pleadings are done on ancient typewriters
or handwritten. Judges struggle to be independent. The
government through the prosecutors pretty much dictates
how criminal cases are to be decided by the judges.
In civil cases this is true if one of the parties has
a connection to some government official. Many, perhaps
the majority, of judges are women. Courtrooms and judges'
chambers are modest, often shabby. In one provincial
courtroom there was no electricity but the judges offered
me hot tea and lots of delicious pastries. The water
for the tea was boiled over a coal stove.
What I loved was that
at the end of each day, the judge would invite us to
a banquet in a nearby restaurant. We would eat what
we call shish kebab, bread with melted cheese, different
cheeses, salads with walnuts, the best French fries
you've ever tasted, bread, and plenty of wine. Toasts
are a custom in Georgia. It is a much ritualized affair.
The men toast their ancestors, children, women, guests,
the future, and the past. My women friends, who had
listened to thousands of these exact same toasts over
the years, would get glassy-eyed and completely tune
them out the moment a toast began. After awhile, they
wouldn't even bother to translate them, but just indicate
the subject to me: old people, children, they would
say.
Most lawyers are young
in the country. Most people in the government are under
40. (I would refer to the government as the babytocracy.)
This is because there is a lot of prejudice against
those educated under the Soviet system. I witnessed
a screaming argument at one of the inaugural bar association
assemblies between an older woman and some young lawyers
about how those who lived under the Soviet system didn't
have an open mind toward the post-Soviet world. The
woman in turn called the post-Soviet lawyers babes in
the woods who had no appreciation for what people like
her had had to live through.
While I was there, I monitored
two inaugural bar association conventions. Present at
both of them were a number of representatives from foreign
organizations to make sure the voting was transparent,
because Georgians are sure that corruption is everywhere-and
they are probably right. At neither one was a bar association
formed. However, I have just learned that recently,
finally, there was another convention held where a bar
association was finally achieved.
These conventions were
fascinating. The first one was held in Tbilisi's philharmonic
hall where it was freezing. We (the ABA) organized the
opening ceremony with government officials and visiting
dignitaries from American and European organizations.
Mike Greco, then president-elect of the ABA, flew in
from Washington D.C. and gave a speech about the relationship
between the rule of law and economic development. I
remember how peeved he was because the representative
of the European Union, a Frenchwoman, talked to her
neighbor and put on make-up during his speech. Frankly,
the Georgian lawyers did not pay much attention to anyone's
speech, although they really enjoyed it when that Frenchwoman
dismissed her interpreter and read her speech in phonetic
Georgian.
The convention was supposed
to begin at 9:30. Around 11 o'clock, it appeared as
if there were enough attendees-600-to have a quorum.
According to the law, the oldest advocate was to preside
until a president of the bar association was elected.
This oldest advocate turned out to be a woman approximately
80 years old. She announced that a quorum was present
and called the convention to order. At noon, it was
adjourned for lunch-a buffet that the ABA provided.
After lunch, it was apparent that not enough people
had returned to the hall so that even though a president
was elected and a charter eventually adopted-late that
night-there were real questions as to whether these
actions were valid because of the lack of quorum.
The Georgian lawyers were
very wary of government interference and ballot box
fraud. So the foreigners, like me, were drafted to keep
watch on the voting process that was organized as follows.
There was a big plastic, transparent box put on the
stage of the philharmonic auditorium. One-by-one the
lawyers walked up on stage, showed an ID to the monitor,
took a ballot, walked across the stage and deposited
the ballot under our eagle eyes. Counting the ballots
was done out in the open with 11 people counting each
vote. The president who was elected was 26 and a member
of a faction whose leader was said to be the most corrupt
lawyer in Tbilisi. A rival faction stalked out and decided
to start its own bar association. It turned out to be
a rivalry between essentially silk-stocking lawyers
and those with plaintiff's practices. (It was reminiscent
of the rivalry between tall-building and plaintiffs'
lawyers here.)
The next day, attendance
was very sparse, and the convention had to be adjourned.
Plans to elect the association's committee members had
to be shelved. As of summer of last year, Georgia was
without a bar association. The rival factions went to
court over the validity of the election of the president
and adoption of the charter. The issue was whether there
had been a quorum. There were lots of negotiations and
other stuff going on behind the scenes that we, the
ABA, weren't privy to, although we footed the bill for
many meetings.
In addition to working
with the bar association and preparing the legal assessment,
I was teaching trial advocacy skills to advocates. The
Georgians are planning to switch from an inquisitorial,
non-jury, civil code system to an advocacy system with
juries for criminal cases, and advocates are eager to
learn our methods of trying cases. Many of the young
Georgian lawyers were smart, good at languages, and
talented. They caught on quickly, and several of them
mastered the art of cross-examination-not only in their
native language, but also in English. They were eager
to improve their skills and knowledge.
I made many friends during
my stay there. One of my favorite persons among the
friends I made was a young lawyer, Giorgi, who was married
with two kids, and living in a large apartment with
his parents. (This was the usual arrangement.) He would
tell me that he loved his country and its traditions
but that he was a "globalist"- meaning progressive
and a member of the world's community and not an isolationist.
Giorgi was typical of so many of the young people I
met: wanting so much for their country to become more
prosperous, for us in the West to know about them, for
there to be opportunities for them and their children,
for corruption to disappear, for democracy and stability
to take hold, for Russia's imperialistic threat to be
lessened. They want what we take for granted. They are
very fearful of what the future holds for their country
and not particularly optimistic.
For me, the experience
was invaluable. It opened my eyes to what it is like
to be a lawyer or a person in the post-Soviet world.
It made me appreciate the incredible difficulties that
a people faces in trying to establish a democratic form
of government and capitalist economic system. No amount
of study, reading, or even contact with ex-patriots
can provide the same appreciation.•
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