Justice has experienced a turbulent first half of the year with strikes by lawyers from the Justice administration –formerly known as court clerks– and civil servants to demand a salary increase and better labor rights. These protests have blocked judicial activity and this has directly affected small law firms and attorneys, who have seen their income diminished, since their survival depends on the progress of the cases and the issuance of sentences. To alleviate the consequences of the judicial strikes, these professionals are being forced to take drastic measures, such as the temporary employment regulation file (ERTE) and temporary closures.
“In the procedural area of law firms, normally, the fees are indexed to the judicial acts. If the procedure has been halted, the problem is that the client cannot continue to be billed because the process is not advancing”, he explained to Five days the lawyer Javier Mata, deputy of the Governing Board of the Madrid Bar Association (ICAM) and managing partner of Andersen in Madrid. “Most of the professionals charge for a finished case and if they are not finished, we do not charge,” said the president of the General College of Attorneys of Spain, Juan Carlos Estévez, who stressed that the strikes are doing “more damage” to the offices small because it is difficult for them to make ends meet.
In the case of large law firms, the consequences are not so serious because they have “greater financial capacity to endure” due to their diversified structure, said the ICAM deputy. And it is that “the reduction of income in the procedural area can be compensated with other areas”, he has added.
From lawyers to officials
The first to go on strike were the lawyers of the Justice administration, who were there from January 24 to February 27, when they negotiated with the Ministry of Justice a monthly increase of up to 450 euros per month. At the end of May, judges and prosecutors also agreed with the ministry on a similar increase. However, these groups have denounced that, to this day, said agreements have not been made effective, for which they have given an ultimatum to the Government to comply with its commitment before going to court and adopting new measures of pressure.
For their part, the Justice officials, who had been threatening to start their protests for some time, began partial strikes on April 17, although on May 22 they decided to go further and began an indefinite strike. In this case, at no time have positions been approached, so the unions decided to suspend their claims until the formation of the next government after the elections on July 23.
Faced with this situation, some deans of bar associations have warned of the difficult situation that the offices are going through: “The lawyers have already begun to close down,” said the dean of Córdoba, Carlos Arias, during a rally on June 28 , the day on which lawyers and attorneys from all over Spain came out to demonstrate against the “collapse” of Justice, which has suffered for years and which worsened with the pandemic, when they had to lower the blinds during the three months of confinement. The Murcia Lawyer’s Office has also warned of closures and layoffs.
In the specific case of the Madrid school, as Javier Mata has indicated, no closures have yet been verified, but there have been “ERTEs and agreed exits”, as well as the request for aid from the Cortina Foundation, dependent on the ICAM, which attends members and family members in vulnerable situations. In the case of attorneys, Estévez has indicated that the institution he presides over urged each of the regional colleges to reduce the membership fee as a support measure, as was done during the covid-19 health crisis.
“Start almost from scratch”
As Javier Mata has indicated, the paralysis of the procedures is generating a “distortion” in the accounts of the offices. Despite not having the same income, personnel costs, which can account for up to 65% of office expenses, office rent and consumption expenses remain. “If the income structure has been damaged due to the delay, law firms begin to have difficulties in a short period of time to meet the cost structure and as a more burdensome consequence, employees begin to be dispensed with and you are forced to change the way development of your activity”, he explained. To this must be added the “moral cost” that this circumstance entails for many lawyers and attorneys, since on many occasions they are forced to “start almost from scratch”, he highlighted.
Throughout the almost six months of conflict, the lawyers have expressed their complaints about the difficulties they have had in their day-to-day lives, in which, among other situations, they have learned of the suspension of the proceedings without sufficient notice. Thus, Eduardo Morato, a member of the legal department of the Venia lawyers’ union, stated it, who regretted that this judicial year can now be considered lost, translated into large damages and losses caused to professionals (lawyers and solicitors) and by supposed to the justiciable”.
In this sense, he has estimated that it will take “between three and five years” for the administration of Justice to “catch up on this break.” “The situation is tragic and irrecoverable as they continue to have to assume the same or similar expenses but without income,” he added.
Letter to the Government
The president of the General Council of Spanish Lawyers, Victoria Ortega, and her counterpart in the prosecution, Juan Carlos Estévez, sent a letter to the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, on June 20, in which they requested the “prompt resolution of conflicts ” to return to a “normal operation of the Rule of Law”.
The letter stresses that Justice is experiencing “a paralysis that seriously affects all citizens immersed in judicial proceedings, as well as, logically, the tens of thousands of professionals from the Legal Profession and the Procuratorate who serve them, and who They are practically unable to work, as are the tens of thousands of people who collaborate, both with the Lawyers and with the Attorney General”. According to the president of the attorneys, so far they have not received a response.
Incidents in the courts
The Barcelona Bar Association (ICAB), one of the largest bar associations in Spain, through the Commission for Relations with the Administration and Justice (CRAJ), conducted a survey between May 26 and July 5 of 2023, to their members to find out the consequences they have suffered due to the strike of officials of the administration of Justice. 193 lawyers from the more than 17,300 practicing collegiate participated in it.
The main conclusions that emerge from the consultation is that 74% stated that they had delays in holding notices and 84% affirmed that judicial proceedings were suspended. The most important incidents have occurred in the civil sphere (almost 50%), followed by social (19%) and criminal (16%). In the family sphere, 9% of proceedings and actions have also been registered that have not been carried out due to the protest of the officials.
In 80% of the cases, legal professionals have assured that they had not been previously informed of the suspension of the signaling, despite the fact that in the vast majority of cases they had asked in advance to verify if a certain judicial action was would celebrate or not
Likewise, of the suspensions of proceedings and trials, only in 12% of the cases has a new appointment date been set with less than a month’s delay; and in 62% of the cases a new signal has been pending.
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2023-07-15 07:50:02
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