The famous Varna lawyer and Vice-president of Varna Free University "Chernorizets Hrabar" Yani Yanev was a guest in the show "The Golden Section" on Varna Radio hosted by Valeria Vasileva. They talked about the art of law, the mastery of lawyers - in particular lawyers who have to obey the rules of law and on the other hand about the fairness and honesty of their clients. Yani Yanev shared his prognoses for the development of law and the future.

Was your interest in law predetermined - this is a rhetorical question, and yet - let's talk about the source of this interest and the traditions

Yes, there was no way not to be ... my father, lawyer Dimitar Yanev, may his memory live for ever, had a very personal motivation from his childhood. That was because my grandfather, after whom I was named - my grandfather Yani, was friends with the famous Varna lawyers - the Mirskis. So my father had so far received the highest level of mastery in the legal profession, this had particularly motivated him and they remained a kind of idol for him and predetermined his desire to be a successful lawyer. Along with him, over the years I have had the opportunity to meet many remarkable people - Bulgarian lawyers and not only lawyers. Since we are talking about the idea of ​​art and law, I must say that many famous Bulgarian theater and filmmakers - actors, directors, theater critics, studied or graduated in law and only then found themselves in the theater and at the cinema - Prof. Gocho Gochev, Konstantin Kotsev, Borislav Sharlandzhiev, if I am not mistaken, Kosta Bandutov and many others. Probably because in our profession, especially in the legal profession, there is a lot of room for artistry and fine speech. Unfortunately, the years when colleagues could express themselves in this way, they are over. I had the opportunity to listen to the pleadings of our great masters, but this is becoming a rare ocassion nowadays. In court, in order to be convincing in the strength of your arguments, in the life argumentation of your interpretation of the legal norms, a very broad general culture is required - knowledge of philosophy, literature, etc. It is not good that there was a break in the continuity and the young colleagues practically did not have the opportunity to meet and listen to these great masters of the pleadings. There were many talented prosecutors, and I had been impressed by the judges, who - especially in criminal cases, after reading the verdict set out the main motives in the courtroom and when it is done in a stylish way, with culture, it makes an incredible impression and raises the prestige of the institution.

When we talk about the art of law, people on the other side are interested in what will happen, what will be their fate or that of their relatives who are a party in a process. For one party it is usually 100% profitable, for the other - the opposite, there are no conditions - if, whether, etc. Where is the art of enforcing the law and at the same time upholding the desire for justice, which I think is inherent in lawyers as well as in everyone?

Communication with the parties in a process, the direct communication, is the responsibility of lawyers. They share all the problems of the parties, including the domestic ones, those that at first glance have nothing to do with the case. At a time when lawsuits dragged on very slowly for many years, we became very close to our clients. As a joke I will share a case when the client commented that when we started the case I was a bachelor, I got married, my daughter was born, then the second one was born…, and the case was still pending. This is a joke, but the truth is that lawyers have a responsibility to make an accurate preliminary analysis of the situation, the evidence, the possibilities for the development of the case and to acquaint their clients with it - to tell them what will happen with certain evidence and facts and what will happen in other cases, so create a realistic idea of the situation. Then, even if they lose the case, people will at least not think that they have lost it in an unfair way and will not put the blame to the court or anyone else, but they will know that objectively what they managed to prove in court weighed less than the other party's evidence - because in court this is what you can prove, the objective evidence.

Can you comment on the language of law - complex, incomprehensible, twisted, with infinitely long sentences. Is there an idea for something to be deliberately veiled and to be clear only to people who practice law, and shouldn't it be a little more democratic and understandable?

The question is quite reasonable. Every profession has a professional language and there is no way to avoid it. This language with specific terms is unknown to the outsider, but the main purpose of this language is to facilitate communication in the first place between us, the lawyers. But since we are working with people who do not speak that language, we must be able to "translate" it - this is another mastery of the art of law. On the other hand, we in the courtroom speak in front of jurors who are non-specialists, but they must understand you, at least in the period of accumulation of knowledge about the specifics of law and language. There is something else that is important - our work, especially pleadings in public processes, also have a preventive role and we must balance the language in order to perform this preventive social function. There must be a compromise, but without belittling our work. As doctors say not to self-medicate ourselves, so I advise you - yes, you have read the law, but do not think that you can apply it by yourselves, because there are many, many peculiarities that not everyone can understand. As for the ambiguity of the laws - this is a very important issue, which was among the main ones we discussed during the last legal conference at Varna Free University - there are violated fundamental principles of making the rule of law and this is unacceptable.

Does the law have a soul?

Oh, if we look strictly at the legal norm, it is an abstract rule, and like any abstract things, there should be no soul, because it is objective and Themis is closed-eyed. But the norm does not apply to itself - it lives through people's lives, through our own lives. Every day, most of the things we do, even without thinking, we do them because some legal norm requires it. When we stop at a red light, it is required by the norm, when we cross a pedestrian path, it is required by the norm, when we buy a pastry and pay 1 lev, it is by virtue of a contract ... that is, the law functions around us although we may not recognize it because it has become an integral part of many levels of legal consciousness and we start thinking about the law and we feel it when there is a conflict, a clash, when someone does not do things the way they think is right, as the norm requires - the norm is the consent of the people of a certain historical time that it is good to be so.
The current state of legislation and lawmaking in Bulgaria. You have great interests in the field of history and I thought that we all know about the Krum's laws - short, precise, clear, and our modern laws are a real jungle - many and more laws and paragraphs, constantly supplemented and amended - when you read a law, the list of changes and additions is sometimes longer than the main text ... Is our society so complicated or is there anything else?

Unfortunately, I would say yes - too complicated, but there is something else - the creative energy of man to invent new things is inexhaustible. And while in the past the time for the development of one thing from one stage to another was very long and centuries passed before the norm had to be changed, now, especially after the third industrial revolution, everything is developing at the speed of light. Nowadays, law is already catching up with the development of public relations and this is one of the big problems that the general theory of law deals with. Law no longer has a prognostic function, as in the past (an example is the Napoleonic Code - a model for civil law in Europe, adopted in 1804, remained almost unchanged until the 1960s). Public life is becoming more and more complex, new phenomena and relations are constantly emerging, and they must be covered by legal norms, to be regulated, and this is one of the reasons. Think about the rapid development of technology, e-commerce, copyright - things change literally every day. During our last legal conference, we commented, for example, on the problem of the legal regulation of paternity in the context of assisted reproduction - so many questions and so few answers. Not to mention the entering of artificial intelligence. No one wants to restrict man from creating new things but regulation is important so that there are no conflicts and harms, and all this requires a new type of knowledge in various fields from the people who make the laws. The great challenge is to make laws, to create norms that work for all situations indefinitely, and during this time people create and create even more new things.

How do you see the future of law as a public sphere and practice, what will happen with the entering of artificial intelligence - you mentioned it earlier, and after that zero-day that more and more scientists are talking about, when artificial intelligence will begin to take independent solutions? Will the law become meaningless at some point?

I hope the artificial intelligence will not have so much power but as for the law - yes, such attempts have already been made - I read that in England they are devising a computer to replace the lawyer in view of the fact that their common law is absolutely boundless. This raises a much larger topic - man creates machines that could potentially be smarter than him, but he should not neglect the development of his own intellect. Let us humans see if we can develop our qualities and be equal to machines. The great masters of cinema show it - Star Wars are fought by armies of artificial intelligence and they, their negative energy, are opposed and defeated again by human beings, thanks to their human qualities. The answer is out there. Yes, people will not stop inventing things that will make their lives easier, but if we want not to become slaves to machines, we must develop our intellect and understand how to use the capacity of our brain, more than 9-10% as many scientists say we are using now.

You can hear the whole interview on the website of Varna Radio ►