O NAMA
Filota Fila
Attorney-at-law
Filota Fila was born in Bitola, in 1914. He graduated from High school in Bitola and later graduated from Faculty of Law in Belgrade, in 1937. After he had graduated from the University, he started working as a judge trainee in Resen, near Bitola. When Bulgarians conquered Macedonia, he was forced to move to Belgrade.
He was hired by Zdravko Isailovic, Belgrade attorney-at-law as a law intern. During the course of the Second World War he was arrested and taken several times to concentration camp in Banjica and was later confined to infamous concentration camp Mauthausen.
Being liberated in 1945, he founded his law office in Grocka, Belgrade suburban district.
Filota Fila had a brilliant career and in his long term legal practice he defended clients across the former Yugoslavia. His defences were true master pieces of legal skills. He is considered to be the founder of modern Yugoslav law practice. For the first time, it was that the trials went out of the court room and had full media coverage.
He was a great adversary against death penalty, advocating its abolition. During his career, he defended a lot of defendants who were sentenced to death. With his experience and deep disapproval of the uncertainty which the convicts had to endure, he wrote a book against the death penalty titled “I defended the people on death row” (published in 1970).
The most famous trial, which raised a huge Yugoslav and world public interest, was his defence of Sefka Hodzic, whom about, he wrote a book: “The truth about Sefka”
He died in Belgrade in 1983.
His office was further run by attorney-at-law Đorđe Bela and Toma Fila.
Đorđe Bela
Attorney-at-law
Đorđe Bela was born in Bitola in 1928. He graduated from Faculty of Law in Zagreb and began his career in law in his own town. He passed the bar exam in 1958, and was appointed as a judge at the district court.
He started his practice as lawyer in 1959 in office of his uncle Filota Fila. Đorđe Bela acted throughout his career alongside his uncle Filota Fila as a defence counsel in many significant trials in Yugoslavia, at the time. His name also became a synonym for taking part in the trials for the major criminal offences.
Đorđe Bela wrote an interesting criminal chronicles “The bat’s knife” (published in 1975). For his work in the Bar Association of Serbia, he received a written recognition.
He died in Belgrade, in 1986.
The office was further run by attorney-at-law Toma Fila.
Toma Fila
Attorney-at-law
Toma Fila was born in Bitola, in 1941. He obtained his University degree at the Faculty of Law in 1963. The same year, he became a law intern at his father’s Filota office. Upon registering the registrar of Serbian Bar Association, he became the youngest lawyer in Yugoslavia at the time.
He worked alongside his father till his death. A few years later, when Djordje Bela passed away as well, he took up the management over the family law firm. With a team of lawyers, he became a founder of a modern law firm which was formed following the model of prominent law firms across the world.
Toma Fila acted as defence counsel in major criminal cases defending many public and political figures in Serbia and across the region. He continued the struggle for the abolition of the death penalty. Strongest arguments in that struggle was the undeniable historical fact that the death penalty was abused in political confrontations and power struggles so many times and without having any impact on decreasing of the criminal rates.
He was the lead defence counsel to many of the indicted Serbs in the proceedings before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
In his career, he acted as a member in several different boards of the Bar Association and from 1990 to 1994 he was President of the Serbian Bar Association. He was the President of the Yugoslav Bar Association Union, two times. He was awarded with the greatest recognition by the Bar Association as well as with numerous professional acknowledgments and recognitions.
He eagerly responds to the many invitations which are sent to him by Serbian and regional Faculties of Law (in Belgrade, Niš, Kragujevac, Novi Sad, Skoplje, Banja Luka, Bitola, Podgorica) to lecture students.
He is proud of numerous generations of law interns and lawyers which trained and studied for the bar exam at his office. He speaks French, Greek, Macedonian and uses Italian language.
He wrote a book titled: „Closing argument“ which was published in 2015.
The office is now run by attorneys Mihajlo Bakrač and Vladimir Petrović.
