The attorney-at-law profession plays an important role in any legal and democratic society, providing clients with appropriate legal assistance they need. To provide effective legal assistance, the attorney forms a special confidential relationship with the client, in which the client shares with him or her a wide range of confidential information, which may even derive from his or her most intimate sphere of privacy. An attorney is bound by a duty to keep everything that is entrusted to him by his client as confidential.
When law enforcement authorities search an attorney’s office, there is a risk that the attorney's privacy may be invaded and that confidential information may be disclosed unwarranted. For this reason, it is necessary to ensure that appropriate mechanisms are in place at an abstract level to prevent impermissible interference with attorneys' privacy privilege in practice.
The legal regulation of search of attorney’s office has been the subject of discussions in the past, among legal experts as well as in the case-law of Slovenian courts and case-law of the European Court of Human Rights. A key change in the Slovene regulations was brought about by the decision of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Slovenia No. U-I-115/14, Up-218/14, in which the Court found provisions of the then applicable Criminal Procedure Act (CPC) unconstitutional. The legislator followed the views of the Constitutional Court and adopted the amendment N of the CPC, by which the performance of investigative acts at law firms was adequately regulated, thereby attempting to ensure adequate protection of attorneys' privacy at the statutory level.
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