Even if the Romanian legislation has enshrined the right of access to a lawyer for a wide category of suspects and defendants, the system is far from perfect. Significant problems remain when it comes to the effectiveness of the defence. There are no clear and detailed rules about the role of the lawyer at the investigative stage and no regular monitoring and evaluation of the appointment system. There is also no specialization of lawyers (for example in representing children or persons in a situation of vulnerability and no course/training on legal assistance during the criminal investigation for lawyers who provide legal aid.48 When it comes to access to a lawyer for persons in a situation of vulnerability, the legislation is vague. National legislation stipulates that whenever the criminal investigation authorities assess that a person cannot defend himself/herself, a legal aid lawyer will be appointed. The impossibility of self-defence is not defined by Romanian law, but according to jurisprudence, it includes situations when the complexity of the case requires qualified legal knowledge or if the suspects or accused person is an elderly person, foreign citizen or stateless person or the persons is not aware of the procedural provisions of Romanian law. Also, if the person is deaf/mute or has mental/ physical disabilities that could in any way affect their preparation for defence. In practice, it is not clear how the assessment of persons in a situation of vulnerability is carried out in practice. Effective Appointment Procedures: The Bucharest’s Bar electronic system for random appointment of legal aid lawyers In Romania, a person cannot waive their right to a lawyer if they are deprived of liberty and a police interview cannot take place in the absence of a lawyer. The Bucharest Bar is the only Bar Association in Romania that currently manages an electronic system for appointing legal aid lawyers.49 It was set up in September 2020 and ensures prompt legal assistance for persons deprived of liberty as well as an efficient and transparent appointment procedure. The electronic system was created at the initiative of the Bucharest Bar Association in order to solve an existing problem, namely the unfair distribution of legal aid cases among lawyers. Some lawyers of the Bucharest Bar were complaining that they were rarely appointed as legal aid lawyers, while others were assigned to cases often. Thus, the electronic system for random appointment of legal aid lawyers was created in order to deal with this dissatisfaction and ensure fair distribution of cases and equal legal aid fees opportunities. Lawyers need to voluntarily register online on the Register of Legal Aid Assistance. Once a request for legal assistance is submitted by the judicial bodies to the Bar, the electronic system will randomly choose a lawyer and notify them by SMS.50 The lawyer has 10 minutes to accept an urgent case and 1 hour to consider other cases. If they confirm in time, the programme issues an electronic delegation and communicates a code and a number to the lawyer via SMS. The lawyer can thus access the case, see its nature and the parties involved. In order to speed up the procedure even more, after the system picks a lawyer, they are immediately contacted by phone by the responsible person from the Bar’s Legal Aid Service. Since 2021, there is also a mobile phone application that lawyers can down48. APADOR-CH, Inside Police Custody 2, 2018, available at https://www.apador.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/ IPC-eng.pdf. 49. Romanian lawyers are organized as a liberal profession and have their own organization - the National Union of the Romanian Bar Associations - as well as 42 local bars at the level of each county. Every local Bar association in the country has a list of legal aid lawyers where the lawyers voluntarily sign up for. According to the updated Regulation framework for the organization, functioning and the attributions of the legal aid services of the bars, the legal aid assistance is provided by lawyers who request to sign in the Register of Legal Aid Assistance. 50. Bucharest Bar, SAJ, Information concerning the electronic distribution of cases through the electronic system https://www.baroul-bucuresti.ro/upload_res/Ghid%20program%20informatic%20SAJ.pdf. 16 load from Google Store.51 The application sends notifications providing information about the cases and runs until it finds an available legal aid lawyer who accepts the case. A lawyer can be requested a maximum of 3 times a day and the system takes into consideration the cases he/she has opted for as well as their refusals. In 2021, due to the high number of refusals, the Bucharest Bar adopted a decision stipulating that lawyers who register more than 30 refusals in 3 months for no reason will be suspended for one year from the Register of Legal Aid Assistance.52 In addition, it also adopted a decision providing specific rules for ensuring a “permanent” function of the Legal Aid Service.53 Namely, the Bar created a permanent list of lawyers always available for urgent cases, by day and by night, during weekends and legal holidays. A lawyer on this list is contacted in cases where there is less than 30 minutes before a police hearing is due to start and none of the lawyers selected by the electronic system have confirmed the appointment. This way, the system guarantees prompt legal assistance during police interviews in all circumstances. A lawyer can choose to remain briefed in one particular case for its entire duration, with the consent of the client and the dean of the Bar. The electronic system transparently publishes information about the number of assigned cases and the money paid to lawyers for the last 6 months. The new system has a positive impact on the attitude of the legal aid lawyers because it comes with safeguards of transparency, fairness of the distribution of cases and predictability. It respects fundamental principles of distribution, ensuring equal opportunities for lawyers to achieve the same income and number of cases. The electronic system ended suspicions regarding the case distribution process because it removed the human factor from the procedure. Bucharest Bar representatives can no longer choose and appoint from a list of legal aid lawyers.54 Before the system was introduced, lawyers would also lose unnecessary time if they were appointed in advance and cases were then rescheduled. Currently, a lawyer is appointed taking into consideration their actual availability and interest which increases the quality of legal aid. The speed and efficiency of the system of appointing a legal aid lawyer has a positive effect on other actors as well, leading to a greater fairness of the overall process. Police officers can no longer evade the appointment system while at the same time they benefit from an efficient criminal investigation.55 This new system for random appointment of legal aid lawyers is a tool that is constantly improving from a technical point of view. The cooperation as well as the training of legal aid lawyers is crucial in this regard and given the necessary commitment, resources and technical expertise, this model could be replicated in other Bar associations across the country as well as in other European countries with a sufficient number of legal aid lawyers. Ultimately, this transparent, fair and speedy system 51. Users’ manual, Bucharest Bar application, https://www.baroul-bucuresti.ro/stire/lansarea-aplicatiei-baroul-bucuresti. 52. Decision no. 01/19.01.2021 of the Council of Bucharest Bar, available at: https://www.baroul-bucuresti.ro/hotarari-ale-consiliului-bb-12. 53. Decision no. 12/27.10.2020 of the Council of Bucharest Bar, available at: https://www.baroul-bucuresti.ro/hotarari-ale-consiliului-bb-11. 54. The general rule for appointing legal aid lawyers-applicable to all other Romanian Bar Associations except the Bucharest Bar association-is the following: the distribution of cases is made according to their complexity in relation to specialization, experience, seniority and availability of the lawyer. If a suspects or accused persons needs a lawyer during criminal proceedings, the police officer or the prosecutor must make a written request to that bar. The Legal Aid Service of the respective Bar will appoint legal aid lawyers by phone contacting those who have expressed their options for the cases in the order determined by the monthly distribution. Each Bar association in the country has a list of legal aid lawyers that is also available on their websites. 55. The Inside Police Custody study (2018) emphasized that in some cases police officers would call a lawyer they already knew in order to speed up the procedure, which in practice led to a formal legal assistance because the lawyer would come and sign the papers. 17