The Amsterdam Law School hosted the International Legal Ethics Conference (ILEC) 2024, marking its first appearance in continental Europe, from July 17-19. The conference centered on the achievements and challenges of digitizing the justice system, with a particular focus on professional ethics.

Supported by the USAID Rule of Law Program, Tamar Khubuluri, a senior lawyer with the Georgian Bar Association (GBA) Ethics Commission and an assistant at Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani Law School, attended the event. She participated in the Legal Ethics and Rule of Law session.

During the conference, Khubuluri presented a paper titled "Standards for Evaluating Professional Obligations of a Lawyer by the Personal Data Protection Service When Requesting Information Containing Personal Data from a Lawyer." The conference addressed a range of topics, including the impact of digitalization and innovation on access to justice, empirical and interdisciplinary approaches to legal ethics, and the philosophy behind legal ethics. Other discussions included the effects of globalization on the legal profession, regulation of the legal profession, ethics in government roles, and the intersection of legal education with ethics and the rule of law.

Khubuluri emphasized that "while the state has a duty to protect citizens' personal data, the confidentiality of a lawyer is a fundamental principle of the rule of law and an essential professional standard. A lawyer's duty to maintain confidentiality without the client's consent upholds the client's autonomy, which is especially significant when the state seeks to intervene."

She highlighted that the conference discussions stressed the need for supervisory bodies responsible for personal data protection to have specific regulations to oversee how lawyers handle personal data, thereby ensuring the preservation of the confidentiality inherent in the lawyer's professional obligations.

ILEC 2024 sparked scholarly, professional, and public dialogue on integrating new technologies into the justice sector and examining regulatory responses from both European and global perspectives, all within the framework of legal ethics and the rule of law.

As the senior lawyer with the GBA’s Ethics Commission, Tamar Khubuluri notes that her participation in the conference strengthened connections with global networks of ethics lawyers, judges, and judicial reformers, fostering further collaboration and learning.