Reform of the Bar: streamlining access, working on specialisations

In the context of the possible reform of the legal system recently approved by the Council of Ministers, it is to be hoped that two main elements will be examined: access to the profession and training in the area of lawyer specialisation. What is certainly one of the greatest mockeries and represents an inequity is precisely access to the profession whose criteria in Italy have always been absolutely wrong because they are based on logical and factual inconsistencies. After a five-year degree course in law, our young people receive from the university what should be a theoretical 'licence', after which they rightly have to do eighteen months of forensic practice, an impressive series of qualifying courses, in order to then be able to take the state exam (note that this is a state exam and not a competition as for the Magistracy or the Notariat). Basically, once the two-year practice period has been completed once a year, one can take the exam, the written part of which is only in December and the orals usually begin in May. This means that at best between university, practice and state examination a young person if he is particularly good and lucky becomes a lawyer between the ages of 28 and 30. The examination is absolutely theoretical in nature even though it should be exclusively practical, since the theoretical certificate is rightly to be given only by the university whose lecturers obviously have all the appropriate expertise in the subjects they teach. In the event that an unfortunate person passes the written but not the oral, he or she will have to repeat not only the oral but, it is not clear by what logical principle, also the written. Each stage of the exam that is not passed can thus result in more than a year's delay before entering the profession. If we go and look in other countries and starting from the impractical criteria of the USA, which certainly are a world apart and honestly out of any logic of real legal preparation, one becomes a lawyer on average at the age of 22 and, unbelievable to say, without even having done a proper law school. Remaining therefore more faithful to a culture closer to us and analysing what happens in Europe, one can note that, on average, one becomes a lawyer five years earlier than in Italy. The average age, in fact, in the rest of Europe, falls to 25 years of age. Are the Italians stupid or is there simply a cumbersome, anachronistic and antediluvian system that penalises our young people absurdly. A careful analysis of the procedure in other European countries shows that in many countries law degrees (often lasting four years) are immediately qualifying, while in other countries such as the United Kingdom no specific degree is required but simply the passing of a qualifying exam. In other countries, such as Spain and Romania, the qualifying examination is replaced by a master's degree or a cross-listed test. Moreover, the supreme mockery and the most obvious discrimination for young Italians is that under the so-called 'right of establishment' any professional with European nationality can freely exercise their profession in one of the 26 EU countries with the consequence that 25-year-old European qualified lawyers can enter the Italian legal world and, legitimately, exercise their profession five years ahead of our youngsters. In Italy, too, in the other professions, action has been taken to make the State examinations 'humane' and, moreover, for all the various categories such as accountants, engineers, etc., there are two State examination sessions per year, with the consequent limitation of the time damage to the candidate who does not pass. Even for a very delicate profession such as that of the doctor, the qualifying examination was, in fact, rightly abolished a few years ago, in line with the principle highlighted above concerning the 'theoretical licence', medical graduates in possession of a suitability assessment of practical training are to be 'deemed qualified for the profession', as specified by the Ministry of the University in a circular with clarifications and the implementation of the rule included in Decree 18/20, which effectively abolished the State examination for qualification to the medical profession. In essence, therefore, the doctor (who, moreover, does not have three levels of judgement to remedy any error like the lawyer, who has three levels of judgement) is qualified with a certificate from the University, while the trainee lawyer must go through the tortuous and very long procedure outlined above. Although there are many other considerations to be made regarding the appropriateness of a State examination for lawyers structured in such a 'far-fetched' manner, I cannot fail to point out that in a world where the legal profession increasingly requires a high degree of specialisation in each subject, the examination in question certainly provides for both civil law and criminal law as subjects, with the result that a candidate who has rightly completed his practice in a given subject is then offered a 'generalist' examination, which is really simply absurd nonsense. The other element that I hope will be taken seriously by the reform is precisely that of specialisation in the various subjects. In this regard, I would just like to point out that according to a research project commissioned at the time by the Prime Minister's Office, there are between 150 and 170 thousand laws in Italy. It is therefore easy to understand that no matter how good and well-prepared an individual lawyer may be, it is not humanly possible for him to optimally disentangle himself from all these laws and the numerous matters that affect the daily lives of individuals and businesses. By this I do not mean that separate professional registers should be created for lawyers who deal with civil, criminal or administrative law, but at least that the client should be able to know to whom he entrusts himself and that it should be clear to him what the real specialisation of his lawyer is. It is in fact a daily occurrence that, professionally, you meet as counterparts lawyers who on their website declare themselves to be experts perhaps in condominium law and that instead you have as counterparts in corporate or criminal law.

*President of the Italian Business Lawyers Association and founder of the Martinez&Novebaci law firm