Attorney to Assist Russia in Legal Reforms

A Ventura County attorney will fly to Moscow this week to help the Russian government reform its civil law system.

Alan E. Wisotsky is one of 15 attorneys nationwide who will make the eight-day trip at the invitation of the Russian Ministry of Justice.

“It’s the closest I’m going to come to leaving my mark on history,” said Wisotsky, 43, who lives in Thousand Oaks.

“They are radically restructuring their legal system as part of the democratic reforms,” he said. “Many of their theoretical and practical procedures for civil law will be modeled after our judicial system.”

While in Russia, the group will present a mock jury trial for Russian judges, attorneys, legislators, professors and law students, Wisotsky said. They also will visit Russia’s Supreme Court and other institutions.

An attorney since 1975, Wisotsky practices in Ventura, primarily representing defendants in civil cases. He has represented Ventura County and the cities of Ventura and Oxnard in a number of police brutality cases. The other attorneys taking part in the mission have different specialties, Wisotsky said.

The group will arrive in Moscow on Saturday and will spend four days there and four days in St. Petersburg. The trip is sponsored by the American Board of Trial Advocates, a national group of trial attorneys. Wisotsky is a past president of the group’s local chapter.

“They want to see how we do it,” said Beverly Halpern, the group’s executive administrator. It will be the organization’s first trip to Russia, she said.

In December, seven members took part in a similar expedition to Czechoslovakia, Halpern said. The following month, the group brought a Czech law student to the United States to study the American legal system.

Wisotsky said that while he is advising Russian attorneys, his wife Beverly hopes to meet with her counterparts in the field of family counseling.

The trip will have personal as well as professional significance, Alan Wisotsky said. Both he and his wife are of Russian descent but they have never visited their ancestral homeland.

Wisotsky said he hopes to track down members of a well-heeled family of Wisotskys who, he has been told, made their fortune in the tea business.

“While this will be mostly a business endeavor,” he said, “I hope to spend some time tracing back our heritage.”