“New generation” of lawyers: how standards of defense in criminal proceedings are changing

Oleksandr Zaitsev, lawyer, advisor at Grain Law Firm

On October 8, 2026, Ukrainian lawyers celebrate a professional holiday – the 29th Lawyer’s Day, established by the Decree of the President of Ukraine No. 1022/97 of September 16, 1997. On this occasion, I consider it appropriate to dedicate my article to the new generation of lawyers who today defend suspects, accused and convicted persons in criminal proceedings.

First of all, I propose to focus on the young generation of lawyers who began their long and thorny path in the legal profession immediately after completing their studies at higher legal education institutions. In recent years, there have been more and more such lawyers in Ukraine, and it is they who continue to shape new trends and standards for providing legal assistance to the Client, in particular, providing defense in criminal proceedings.

However, in no case should this material be perceived as a “manifesto” of the new generation of the Ukrainian bar, since experienced and authoritative lawyers who have established themselves as pillars of the bar remain indispensable mentors and coordinators for young lawyers who daily adopt their invaluable experience and master the most important hard and soft skills.

Instead, based on my own observations of the development of the legal market, I propose in this material to outline the key changes that the modern young bar is undergoing.

New approaches and advantages

A characteristic feature of young professionals who are forming a new generation of lawyers today is that in most cases they are yesterday’s students of higher legal education institutions who immediately joined the bar as lawyers and/or assistant lawyers, without having previous experience working in law enforcement, judicial and other state bodies.

Previously, it was common practice for former investigators and prosecutors, judges who had worked in law enforcement agencies for a long time, with significant experience in conducting pre-trial investigations of criminal proceedings and supporting the state prosecution in courts, to enter the legal profession. And if in the 2000s and even 2010s, the presence of such a background and experience in law enforcement agencies for a lawyer was considered an absolute advantage when defending a Client in criminal proceedings, in recent years this trend has gradually changed to the diametrically opposite.

New approaches to collecting evidence by pre-trial investigation agencies and their further use during trial require a lawyer to have a flexible and comprehensive approach to their analysis, as well as systematic and structured analytical thinking, especially in criminal proceedings investigated by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine under the procedural guidance of the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office.

That is why the young generation of lawyers, who have not undergone the so-called professional deformation as a result of long-term work in investigative bodies or prosecutors’ offices, demonstrates a flexible, analytical and comprehensive approach to defense, in which the legal problem a person faces can be viewed from different angles, including non-obvious ones, and offer the Client a non-standard and at the same time effective defense strategy against the accusation.

No matter what anyone may say, work in law enforcement agencies, in particular investigative activities, as a rule, forms the habit of acting according to long-established algorithms and established patterns.

At the same time, it is a completely different situation when a young assistant lawyer from the first days of his work learns to think creatively, look for non-standard approaches to solving legal problems and build his own defense strategy, which directly affects his further professional development. When such an assistant lawyer receives a bar certificate at the same time as a lawyer who recently worked in the investigation, it is possible that at the first stages it is yesterday’s assistant who will have an advantage in the efficiency and quality of the Client’s defense.

Visualization of the legal position

Another striking pattern of the modern generation of lawyers is the introduction of visual and illustrative approaches when defending the Client in court: whether it is considering the issue of applying a preventive measure or the trial of the accusation on the merits.

As a rule, the direct participation of the defense lawyer in the court hearing traditionally takes place in a verbal and documentary format.

However, in recent years, lawyers have increasingly used additional tools to convey their legal defense position to the court, in particular tables, diagrams, visual materials, demonstration experiments and direct presentation to the court of certain items related to the circumstances of the criminal proceedings.

Such a creative and unconventional approach greatly facilitates the court’s perception of a large amount of information, in particular regarding calculations, corporate structure, transaction flow, chronology of events, etc. After all, along with auditory perception of information, visual perception is also involved, thanks to which complex circumstances become clearer in content, and the legal position of the defense is better remembered.

Artificial Intelligence – Benefits or Risks?

Another noticeable sign of the change in modern standards of client protection in criminal proceedings by the younger generation of lawyers is the increasingly active use of artificial intelligence tools in their practical activities, such as Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT, Grok, etc., the choice of which each lawyer makes depending on their own needs and criteria.

At the same time, it should be noted that the majority of lawyers who have been working in the profession for years or even decades have also begun to actively use AI in their work, which indicates the versatility and high efficiency of this tool among the modern legal community, regardless of generation.

In this case, we are talking about using the specified tools as a convenient and effective means of searching for relevant case law of national courts, in particular the Supreme Court, the practice of the European Court of Human Rights, as well as special and narrowly specialized legislation.

This option significantly facilitates and accelerates the work of a lawyer when forming a legal position and preparing procedural documents. In particular, it can be used to quickly process legal conclusions of the Supreme Court on specific issues of law enforcement, as well as to structure the provisions of special legislation regulating disputed legal relations that have become the subject of the relevant criminal proceedings.

At the same time, I urge all lawyers who use artificial intelligence for this very purpose to always check the reliability of the cited case law and provisions of the legislation against official sources and state registers, because everyone has long known that AI sometimes generates information that does not actually exist and/or has never existed.

It is also impossible not to emphasize the usefulness of AI in carrying out deep analytical work when processing voluminous documents and/or materials of criminal proceedings to identify inconsistencies, contradictions, coincidences, etc., which can generally be done independently and manually, as was the case in previous decades.

However, the use of artificial intelligence for such tasks significantly simplifies and accelerates the implementation of more global and strategic tasks.

AI is also a useful assistant for a lawyer when editing ready-made procedural documents, in particular for checking grammar, punctuation, style, etc.

However, in no case do I support the practice, which is widespread today among lawyers, and especially their assistants, of writing procedural documents exclusively with the help of artificial intelligence based on the prompts given to it. Such an approach to preparing documents not only slows down professional development and gradually leads to professional stagnation, but can also negatively affect the further strategy of protecting a client in criminal proceedings, especially when resolving issues on which a person’s freedom, his future fate, as well as property and other consequences for him and his family directly depend.

Therefore, I urge young lawyers to voluntarily not allow artificial intelligence to replace themselves and to always remember the high degree of responsibility for the rights and freedoms of their client, as well as the negative consequences that may arise in the event of thoughtless use of AI during the defense in criminal proceedings.

Quality of services and professional culture

In conclusion, I consider it necessary to separately focus on changing the standards of quality of legal services and increasing the level of culture of interaction of young lawyers with the court and procedural opponents.

Today, lawyers who are representatives of the new generation are increasingly aware of the importance of providing high-quality legal services, since the protection of the Client in criminal proceedings on the basis of a concluded agreement on the provision of legal assistance is the same service as any other service in the field of services. And, of course, as when receiving any other paid service, we always expect it to be provided qualitatively.

Similarly, lawyers in the realities of the modern competitive legal market clearly understand: it is not enough to simply perform their work in the interests of the Client, it is necessary to perform it qualitatively, which, accordingly, the Client expects when he turns to a particular lawyer for legal services.

Awareness and implementation of such standards of Client protection in criminal proceedings changes the rules of the game in the legal market, which are consciously accepted by the modern generation of lawyers.

Similarly, it is possible to emphasize the growth of the level of professional culture in the interaction of young lawyers with representatives of law enforcement, judicial and other state bodies, close to European standards and practices.

First of all, we are talking about a change in the professional model of communication, since previously the interaction of a lawyer with representatives of state bodies was often based on the principle of tough confrontation, when the categorical nature of the position itself was perceived as a sign of principle and professionalism.

The modern approach is gradually changing this paradigm: the professionalism of a lawyer is increasingly manifested not in the loudness of statements or conflicting behavior, but in the ability to defend a position with arguments, while maintaining the proper level of communication and respect for procedural opponents.

At the same time, improving the culture of professional interaction in no way means abandoning the principledness or willingness of the lawyer to fundamentally defend the interests of the Client. On the contrary, the new generation of young lawyers is able to combine principledness with correctness, and a sharp legal position with the appropriate form of its presentation.

At the same time, professional culture is an integral part of the quality of legal assistance. The client evaluates the work of a lawyer not only by the result of the court session, but also by how confidently, correctly and professionally his defender communicates with the court, prosecutor, investigator and other participants in the criminal proceedings.

Ultimately, it is precisely such changes that are gradually forming a new culture of advocacy, in which professionalism is determined not only by knowledge of the law and the ability to build an effective defense strategy, but also by the ability to communicate, use modern technologies, think critically and meet the expectations of the Client.

Thus, the modern young generation of lawyers is gradually forming new standards for the implementation of defense in criminal proceedings, which are based not only on a thorough knowledge of legislation and judicial practice, but also on analytical and critical thinking, the ability to find non-standard solutions, the use of modern technologies and artificial intelligence tools, visualization of the legal position, as well as a high level of professional and communication culture.

At the same time, the new generation of lawyers does not cancel the achievements of previous generations, but, on the contrary, develops them, combining the invaluable practical experience of professional lawyers with modern approaches to the implementation of defense.

It is this combination of experience, professional skills, modern technologies and new approaches to work, in my opinion, that will determine the further development of the new generation of the Ukrainian bar.