Recently, we reported that for the first time since 2020, the “birth rate” of attorneys exceeded the “death rate”. This shift is now reflected in the status of legal consultations: according to official data, there are no longer any lawyerless LCs in Belarus. Every consultation now has at least one attorney.
Yet the situation remains critical in LCs staffed by just one specialist. There are 55 districts nationwide where a single attorney is expected to serve several thousand — or even tens of thousands — of persons.
Summing up, we can now confidently echo the words of A. Shvakov at the BRBA meeting: indeed, there are no LCs without lawyers left in the country. MogRBA, once a leading underperformer, now shows signs of stable development, along with Gomel and Vitebsk regions. Special attention should be given to the Brest region, which gained 26 attorneys in a year while losing only five — resulting in a net increase of 21, surpassing even Minsk's 17 (which usually leads the stats).
The picture is less optimistic in the Grodno region. Its Bar Association remains the only one where the “death rate” still exceeds the “birth rate,” and the number of attorneys continues to decline. This is especially striking given that
under our findings Grodno Bar previously had among the fewest “problematic” LCs — those without lawyers or staffed by only one.
It’s worth recalling that our project first flagged lawyerless LCs in March 2023. Now, nearly two years later in March 2025, we can reflect on the path. Since alerting the public to the alarming reality of entire districts without legal aid, the bar’s administration has worked to
create a semblance of normalcy. While it is undoubtedly positive that most vacant consultations have now been staffed with at least one lawyer, the broader crisis remains unresolved. Due to ongoing repression and the profession’s deepening personnel shortage, solving the problem of “Schrödinger’s LCs” took two full years.
Lastly, while A. Shvakov spoke publicly of a net gain of five attorneys over the past year — marking the first increase since 2020 — the total of 1,605 attorneys still reflects a 27% decline from pre-purge numbers. We will soon review who became a lawyer in 2024, but the general trend is clear: recent law graduates are being used to plug statistical holes. Furthermore, the profession continues to absorb former prosecutors, judges, investigators, and security officers — who, since 2021, enjoy an expedited path into the bar.