Pepeliaev Group worked on the draft unified Code of Civil Procedure of the Russian Federation

Law firm Pepeliaev Group took part in developing proposals to finalise the draft of the unified Russian Code of Civil Procedure in the not-for-profit partnership “Support for Developing Corporate Law in Russia” which brings together leading Russian law firms.

The unified Russian Code of Civil Procedure is aimed at replacing the effective Russian Code of Civil Procedure together with the Russian Commercial Procedure Code. However its correlation with the Russian Code of Administrative Proceedings, which came into force on 15 September 2015, is unclear. 

The draft is being developed by the working group of the State Duma Committee for civil, criminal, arbitration and procedural legislation. 

Partners and heads of practice groups in law firms together with in-house lawyers are working on the proposals for the draft. They have noted that the draft should not be limited to mechanically combining the current Russian Code of Civil Procedure and Russian Commercial Procedure Code: It should provide for new solutions that facilitate effective and fair justice.

“The timelines for litigation should be reasonable, but not at the expense of quality. Timelines that are manifestly too short should not be set in the law,” comments Svetlana Denga, Senior Associate at Pepeliaev Group. “To alleviate legal uncertainty and to reduce the workload of courts that are forced to consider similar cases, it is necessary to strengthen the importance of positions of the highest court - the Russian Supreme Court. This includes positions stated by its judicial boards regarding particular cases”.

Pepeliaev Group is a leading Russian law firm offering the full range of legal services in all regions of Russia, most former Soviet countries and abroad. Over 160 lawyers in Moscow, St Petersburg, Krasnoyarsk, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Vladivostok, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Seoul provide legal assistance to over 1,500 companies operating in various industries, 50% of these are international corporations implementing long-term investment projects in Russia.