The enormous efforts that judicial reform processes have carried out since the 1980s did not have a clear agenda of measures aimed at reducing obstacles to access to justice. Although it is always presented as a central objective, little progress has been made in that direction.
The reforms have not clearly targeted the role to be played by lawyers who work in court, much less those who carry out their profession in other areas. In general, it has always been necessary to deal with the bar associations, especially in civil procedural reforms, since they fear that a more efficient procedural system could harm the union they represent. The idea that the interests of lawyers are not on the same side as the satisfaction of the interests of the community helps to justify their “bad press”.
The legal profession has always been intimately linked to certain values. For the inquisitorial tradition, the lawyer, bearer of high morality, is considered as a kind of assistant to the judge in the search for justice. For others, he is considered a kind of “champion” of the defense of individual rights against the advances of the State, or the ideal of the lawyer is associated with the defender of the causes of the most disadvantaged.
What are or should be the values that shape professional practice? What are the values that guide the professional practice of the new generations?
It is clear that there is no uniform way of exercising the legal profession and this is not only a problem of associated values or specialization, but of the various ways of relating to the legal needs of the population. In that sense, we know very little about what the large number of people who leave our law schools with the qualification of lawyer or attorney actually do and what functions they perform in the legal system.
In our country, those who have dedicated themselves and continue to dedicate themselves to the defense of human rights undoubtedly have special consideration in relation to their commitment to these causes. In this sense, contemporary society confronts us with new issues and movements of a varied nature: gender issues wage legal battles of great magnitude; the defense of informal workers has affected the classic model of the labor lawyer; the rights of freedom of expression and information, in the digital environment; the controversy over legal abortion; the defense of the environment; the defense of the rights of non-human persons or the rights of nature; the rights of indigenous peoples, among many others, demand that their perspectives be incorporated into the exercise of any form of law.
Thus, the world of lawyers linked to the defense of human rights can no longer be understood from its classical patterns but has branched out into many other fields in which the ideological, political and social substratum is also very varied. Surely, the strength of these new rights will depend largely on the success of the litigation and, therefore, on the professional performance of the lawyers.
It is not unreasonable to state that we are very far from training lawyers to meet the most relevant social needs. A glance at the curricula of the largest law schools in the country is enough to conclude that professionals capable of contributing to access to justice, much less improving the democratic quality of our society, such as providing security, are not being considered. legal to social relations or stabilize the institutional rules of political processes. Certainly, every society has its moral heroes, but to contribute to its democratic quality, what is required are professionals who, wherever they work, are capable of providing quality legal services to all citizens.
If we admit the relevance of the role of the legal profession and access to justice in the construction of democracy, those lawyers who are not up to their most basic demands should be dispensed with. No turns.
Member of the Board of Directors of Inecip. Lawyer and university professor