What Is It Like to Be a Lawyer in 2026? We Asked Our Defense Attorneys

What is it like to be a lawyer in 2026? We asked our defense attorneys

Lawyers are the first to go out to help their clients, spend months handling criminal cases, travel thousands of kilometers to reach penal colonies and courts, and familiarize themselves with dozens of volumes of criminal case files under tight deadlines.

For Advocacy Day, the professional holiday of lawyers, we asked our defense attorneys to tell us what this work feels like in 2026.

Because of growing pressure and risks from the Russian authorities, we are less and less often able to talk about our lawyers’ involvement in criminal cases. Right now, we are raising 420,000 rubles to pay for the work of OVD-Info’s non-public lawyers. Support the work of our defense attorneys!

🧡 If you do not have a ruble bank card, you can support our work with foreign bank cards and in cryptocurrency.