Judicial assistant: current state of legal regulation and review of court practice
Authors: Shumylo Mykhailo 
Published: August 2021

Patronage service(executive support service)is a type of service and employment relations that arise, change and terminate to ensure effective, proper and quality performance of their duties by officials who are legally entitled to have a patronage servant. The term “patronage” comes from “patronatus” in Latin- the state or rights of the patron. In the national legislation, the patronage service is a quite new category and was first introduced in 1993 with the adoption of the Law on Civil Service, and therefore has no old traditions. The change in the status of the patronage service in Ukraine indirectly indicates its formation.
There is no single approach to the principles of patronage service in foreign countries, for example, in Italy and Germany patronage service does not stand out as a separate concept, but such kind relationships are included in the public service, while in Australia, Britain, Georgia, Canada, Lithuania and Poland patronage service conceptually stands out as a category of public service with a number of special rules. The establishment of a patronage service in Ukraine was an objective necessity and today it operates in the system of legislative, executive and judicial branches. The labor functions of patronage service employees are directly correlated with the labor functions of public law official to whom they are assigned (subordinated). The patronage service includes advisers, assistants, commissioners, press-secretaries of the President of Ukraine, employees of the secretariats of the Chairman, First Deputy Chairman and Deputy Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, employees of patronage services of the Prime Minister of Ukraine and other members of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, advising assistants of People's Deputies of Ukraine, judicial assistants and scientific advisers to judges of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, judicial assistants, advisers to the Chairman of the Supreme Court and chairmen of cassation courts, as well as positions of patronage servants in other state bodies. At the same time as for judiciary, part 4 of Article 92 of the Civil Service Law (2015) states that the specifics of patronage service in courts, bodies and institutions of the judicial system are determined by the legislation on the judiciary and the status of judges.
Judicial assistants are an integral part of the judiciary. Despite their legal status, whether civil or patronage servants, the lion's share of work is performed by judicial assistants. It can be concluded, directly or indirectly, that effective work of a court or a judge is not possible without the effective work of judicial assistants (judges' offices) and this interdependency is obvious.
It should also be noted that a significant number of assistants later become judges, or if we take a look at the biographies of judges of all levels we can find out that many of them took their first steps in the legal profession as judicial assistants. This might lead to the conclusion that “judicial assistants environment” is a kind of a personnel reserve of the judiciary.