The subject of the research is a comprehensive analysis of how digital technologies affect the exercise and limits of subjective rights in legal practice, creating new opportunities while at the same time generating new forms of abuse of rights. The focus is on the mechanisms for using e-justice, video conferencing systems, electronic document management, cloud services, and artificial intelligence in a lawyer’s work, as well as the risks that arise in this context of procedural abuses and breaches of the duty to preserve attorney-client confidentiality. The study examines forms of bad-faith exercise of a lawyer’s procedural rights in the context of digitalization (delaying proceedings by exploiting technical capabilities, manipulating electronic evidence, unethical conduct in online hearings, the use of deepfake technologies, etc.) and the impact of these practices on the balance between private and public interests in the administration of justice. Special attention is paid to the relationship between the general civil-law concept of abuse of rights and the specific restrictions inherent in the status of a lawyer. The research is aimed at identifying gaps and conflicts in the regulation of digital tools used in legal practice and at developing theoretically sound proposals for improving legislation in general and the corporate acts of the legal profession in particular. The methodological framework of the study consists of formal legal analysis of normative acts and case law, as well as comparative-legal and doctrinal methods used to identify digitalization trends and their impact on abuse of rights in legal practice. The scientific novelty of the research lies in substantiating the concept of “digital abuse of rights” in legal practice as a specific type of bad-faith conduct arising from the use of e-justice, remote participation in court hearings, artificial intelligence, and other digital technologies. The study proposes an original classification of digital abuses committed by lawyers (procedural manipulation using technical capabilities, bad-faith handling of electronic evidence, threats to attorney–client confidentiality, and other forms of undermining trust in the court and in the parties to proceedings) and refines the criteria for distinguishing between permissible procedural activity and abuse of rights in the digital environment. Novelty is also reflected in the proposals for amendments to legislation and corporate acts aimed at minimizing digital abuses and strengthening confidence in legal practice and the administration of justice.
Konstantin Igorevich Evteev (Mon,) studied this question.