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юрист для моряка

What is a lawyer and a marine lawyer and why does the seafarer need exactly marine lawyer?

Very often I hear a phrase from the seafarers of their friends or the friends’ son or a nephew who is a lawyer or works for the best advocate in the city. Moreover, I hear as this very lawyer has graduated from the institute with good grades only and has won a case of pension recalculation from the pension fund itself. And it’s not just so.

If the familiar lawyer has oversmarted the pension fund, couldn’t he cope with a foreign ship owner or insurance company, which is obliged to pay?

But as the practice shows, thanks to these very lawyers I earn my money, and it’s a good luck if there is nothing to remake after him, but it’s a utopia. There is always a lot of work to remake, and there are lots of crucial mistakes.

Let’s figure out what is a marine lawyer and how he differs from the civil lawyer.

  • The marine lawyer negotiates and corresponds in fluent English.
  • The marine lawyer will never negotiate with the crewing agency realizing that it’s just a mediator in the issue of employment.
  • The marine lawyer understands what is P&I and knows that there is no any insurance policy.
  • The marine lawyer for a minute will tell you about your vessel, flag, ship owner, navigation arrear, number of inspections the vessel has suffered and the history of detentions if any.
  • The marine lawyer will never advise to apply to the European Court on human rights if the ship owner hasn’t paid the salary.
  • The marine lawyer will never ask a seafarer: How long have you been sailing aboard?
  • The marine lawyer knows of the International conventions existence, and what is the most important, can figure them out.
  • The marine lawyer understands what a Maritime Lien is.
  • The marine lawyer is able to tell about his practice or identical cases for hours.

 

I guess, now you see the difference between a marine lawyer and just a lawyer.

Marine theme is very specific and requires considerable knowledge. Unfortunately, not every civil lawyer can figure it out at once. There are so many details one can’t get into at once without knowing all the specifics of the work.

It’s not just a set of some rules proscribed in one text-book, and it’s not a civil code. Frequently the marine lawyers have to go through such a mess that is even unfamiliar to the civil lawyers.

I can write volumes on this very topic of difference between specialists, but I think everything is clear so far.

The service can be considered qualitatively provided only in the case when the expert knows not only the general norms of the law, but also the insides of the process. When your case in not the only one and, mainly, not the first one in his practice. When you needn’t explain to the specialist your vision of the case, as it will be just the waste of time.

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