Martin Šolc Elected Vice-President of International Bar Association

The International Bar Association (IBA) is the world’s leading organisation of over 200 bar associations, including the Czech association, and has over 50,000 individual members. Martin will assume the second ranking position in the IBA in 2015 from current Vice President, US lawyer David Rivkin. The new officers were elected by the IBA Council at the IBA Annual Conference in Tokyo today by bar association representatives and individual members alike.

“I am very honoured for the trust the IBA Council has expressed in electing me Vice President and consider this achievement as recognition of my more than twenty-year involvement in the IBA and as an endorsement of what I pursued as the Secretary-General over the last two years,” Martin said.

In his two-year term as Vice President, Martin plans to further the discussion on how the IBA operates, such as whether to provide online access to conferences and seminars to a wider number of professionals. Martin also believes that in addition to being the global voice of the legal community the IBA should boost its regional involvement.

“I would like to extend my warm congratulations to Martin. No Czech lawyer has ever held a higher position in our profession. At the same time, Martin has not forgotten to express the interests of the Czech Bar Association within the IBA and I think it is thanks to him that Czech lawyers have a good reputation on an international level. I hope that the IBA’s tradition – that the Vice-President usually becomes the President – will continue and that Martin will be elected IBA President in 2017,” said Martin Vychopeň, Chairman of the Czech Bar Association, in response to Martin’s election as Vice President.

Based in London, the IBA is the largest and most influential organization of legal practitioners, bar associations and law societies in the world. The IBA was established in 1947 by 37 national bar associations, two years after the end of the Second World War and 16 months after the creation of the United Nations (UN), in the global spirit of joining together to create a better world after such a devastating period. The IBA holds over 60 conferences annually, which are attended by more than 5,000 lawyers. The 2014 Annual Conference in Tokyo was opened by the Japanese Prime Minister and the opening ceremony was attended by the Emperor and Empress of Japan. In 2015, the semi-annual meeting of IBA bodies will be held in Prague.