Office and Law Firm Collective Bargaining Agreement in 2022

The legal profession has traditionally been included among those considered liberal professions, therefore, the application of the office and law firm agreement to this sector is, to say the least, controversial. This is because the employment relationship is considered a special class by the General Statute of Advocacy, but the statute itself also establishes that advocacy can be practiced as an employee through an employment contract. It would be through this assumption that a profession considered liberal could be practiced as an employee, raising the question of how to regulate this relationship through labour law and, therefore, opening the door to the collective bargaining agreement for offices and law firms.

Law Firm Collective Bargaining Agreement

Royal Decree 1331/2006, of November 17, is responsible for regulating the employment relationship of lawyers who provide services in law firms. It establishes that this special relationship will be regulated, among other sources, by specific collective bargaining agreements and those exclusively applicable to law firms. However, this is a difficult premise to meet, since, despite some attempts to draft a national collective bargaining agreement for lawyers, it was not achieved. According to the above, this special relationship would be destined to be governed by law and, subsidiarily, by contractual agreements.

Office and Law Firm Collective Bargaining Agreement

When we talk about a collective bargaining agreement, we refer to agreements between workers' representatives and employers with the aim of establishing working conditions in a specific sector. The first obstacle that law offices will encounter in reaching a collective bargaining agreement is precisely the individual and independent nature of the practice of law, which clashes head-on with the collective nature of the agreements. Furthermore, in these cases, even if an employed lawyer works in a firm, both the employer and the employee will be governed by the same rules and principles that regulate their profession. For all this, the question arises as to the advisability of applying the office and law firm collective bargaining agreement to lawyers who work as employees in firms. This is not a trivial matter, since in addition to what has been argued above, it must be added that there is no national office and law firm agreement and that each agreement, with a different territorial scope, contains different specifications and premises, the concept of office being very broad and different depending on the agreement in question, and may or may not include legal activities within its scope of application. As can be seen, the issue is controversial and decisions can be found in both directions. A situation that only confirms the need to reach an agreement for the creation of a specific and exclusively applicable agreement, which clears up any type of doubt. Especially, considering that the practice of law through an employment relationship is a growing and increasingly common reality. However, although law firms have been applying the office and law firm agreement to the relationship with their lawyers when there is an employment relationship, this would not be applicable according to the currently existing legal framework. Today there are several solutions to control access to your space, such as a smart lock. If you want to open doors remotely and grant access to certain people, we recommend buying Raixer, the electronic lock that connects doors to the Internet so you can open them from your mobile. We also recommend these articles: Trends in Real Estate Servicers in 2020 How to Set up a Coworking Space: 8 Steps ‍

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