ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the implications of proactive policing for defence lawyers, and defence lawyering, in the Netherlands and in England and Wales. It seeks to establish those issues that are jurisdiction-specific and, more importantly, those issues that cross jurisdictional boundaries. In principle defence lawyers in both jurisdictions must act in the best interests of their clients, which require them to prepare the most favourable case possible to present to the court. In the Netherlands, proactive methods which have led to prosecution evidence are frequently kept out of the file and thus kept secret from the defendant and his or her lawyer, and from the trial judge. Defence lawyers occupy a potentially ambiguous position in both of the major legal traditions in Europe. Proactive policing raises in an acute form a number of problems that defendants and defence lawyers experience in both inquisitorial and adversarial systems.
