The Legal Profession calls for a return to full face-to-face attendance in the courts

The president of the CGAE, Victoria Ortega, underlined the important "collaboration of the legal profession to achieve a more efficient and effective justice" at the opening of the XIV Conference of Commissions on Relations with the Administration of Justice.

After two years with limitations in the courts due to the Covid19 pandemic and when the volume of cases has recovered the volume prior to the pandemic, the Lawyers ask for a return to total face-to-face attendance. "From the legal profession we demand a return to normality in the facilities of the administration of Justice. Attendance must be respected", requested Victoria Ortega, president of the General Council of Spanish Lawyers at the inauguration of the XIV Conference of Relations Commissions with the Administration of Justice, which are held in Santander.

"Technology cannot replace face-to-face attendance," Ortega stressed, explaining that the Legal Profession is preparing amendments in this regard for the three Efficiency texts that the Congress of Deputies is processing, to guarantee "the presence of the legal profession before the judicial bodies".

One of the fundamental issues that will be addressed at these conferences, which are being held today and tomorrow under the slogan "Giving a voice to the Legal Profession", will be professional secrecy, "which is at the very basis of the right to defence, which is practiced by the legal profession , but whose ownership is held by citizenship," Ortega said. "Professional secrecy is a right and a duty of the legal profession. The rule of law must have its own means to prosecute criminal actions without the need for any breach of professional secrecy", he explained. This is an issue included in the General Statute of the Legal Profession and the Code of Ethics and it will be very important to see how it is addressed in European regulations.

In addition, Ortega has underlined the important "collaboration of the legal profession to achieve more efficient and effective justice." The president of the Superior Court of Justice of Cantabria, José Luis López del Moral, has agreed on this point, pointing out that "the objective (of the administration of Justice) is to provide the most efficient service to the citizen", and that is where coordination .