Samo Turel

Born on Youth Day in 1975, he attended elementary school in Renče. After completing secondary school in Nova Gorica (now Gimnazija Nova Gorica), he continued his studies at the Faculty of Law of the University of Ljubljana. He graduated in 2000 and was employed at the Regional Chamber of Commerce for Northern Primorska in Nova Gorica. In the same year, he was given the opportunity to complete his mandatory internship for the state bar exam, so he took a two-year position at the Higher Court in Koper and completed his internship at the courts of the Nova Gorica judicial district. After passing the state bar exam in March 2003, he remained in the judiciary. For the first seven years, he served as court secretary, and after the 2010 judicial reform, he became court director. In this role, he led a team of 160 employees at five locations in Nova Gorica, Ajdovščina, Idrija, and Tolmin, together with an excellent team.

Since 2009, he has also served as a mediator for civil and commercial disputes at the court. In 2006, he was the head of the working group “Preparation and execution of court budgets and accounting” within the “Matra flex” project at the Supreme Court of the Republic of Slovenia. From October 2017 to December 2022, he was a member of the “Green Printing” project group at the Supreme Court of the Republic of Slovenia, whose goal is to modernize the available multifunctional devices, primarily with a view to ensuring a lower carbon footprint and lower consumption of consumables. From March 2018, he was a member of the “Court Staff” project subgroup of the “Improving the Quality of the Judiciary” project at the Supreme Court of the Republic of Slovenia, whose strategic goal is to improve the skills and develop the knowledge of all employees in Slovenian courts. From 2017 to 2022, he was a member of the Commission for Complaints in Employment Relations at the Government of the Republic of Slovenia.

He has always sought to expand his professional activities to the international level. As a court director, he was a member of the European Judicial Network in Civil and Commercial Matters at the European Commission, which prepares European Commission directives and regulations aimed at facilitating and accelerating cross-border civil and commercial proceedings within the European Union. As a legal expert, he represented the court within the CEPEJ (European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice) network at the Council of Europe, which aims to improve the efficiency of judicial systems within the member states of the Council of Europe by analyzing the situation and preparing guidelines and recommendations.

Since his student days, he has been happily involved in the social life of the community where he lives. During his student years, he was president of the Vinko Vodopivec Academic Choir in Ljubljana and president of the Goriška Students’ Club in Nova Gorica and the Nova Gorica Swimming Club. He continued his social activities as a member of the parents’ council of the Nova Gorica Music School and the Fran Erjavec Elementary School in Nova Gorica, where he was president of the school board, until he was elected mayor.