- For more than a month, lawyers have been mobilized against the pension reform.
- A new demonstration was organized this Monday in Paris between Bastille and Nation.
- A meeting is scheduled for Tuesday between the Prime Minister and the professional bodies.
"We never got there, 164 bars on strike, thousands of lawyers on the street, it's a first," Xavier Autain smiled bitterly. Perched on the sound truck which opens the procession, the lawyer, member of the council of the Order of the Paris bar, watches his colleagues, coming from all over France, pounding the pavement between the Bastille and the Place de la Nation . They were 15,000 according to the National Bar Council to have come to denounce the pension reform, on the eve of a decisive meeting between the representative bodies of the profession and the Prime Minister. If the reform were adopted, their fund - managed by the profession and in balance - would be absorbed by the general system. A merger that would lead, according to the lawyers' union, to a doubling of contributions (from 14 to 28%) for professionals earning up to 40,000 euros per year.
Small cabinets in the hot seat
“It's hard to project yourself, to imagine the future of the firm with such a reform. Lately, we have been wondering if we are going to get out of this or what concession we will have to make if the government does not fold. For many, like Catheline Modat, 40, a lawyer specializing in labor law and vice-president of the national federation of young lawyers (Fnuja), the future, in recent months, looks like a point of giant interrogation. Will his cabinet, set up five years ago with two partners and which now has three employees, be able to cope with such an increase in expenses? "I may have to separate myself from some people," she sighs.
Simon, he set up his cabinet alone, two years ago. If today, he manages to get a comfortable salary - between 2,000 and 3,000 euros per month "by working evenings and weekends" - he fears that he will not be able to get by after the reform. "Today, I'm about 45% of charges, not counting the rent, but if we go to 55 or 60%, I don't see how I'm going to get out of it. I cannot increase my fees, my clients will no longer follow me. "
Many deplore the overused image of "haves" that sticks to the skin of the profession. "The business lawyer in his big law firm that earns crazy money does not represent the reality of the profession at all," insists Agathe Monchaux, lawyer in Versailles (Yvelines) and member of the union of young lawyers. Median income - 43,000 euros according to the National Bar Council - conceals significant disparities: 20% of lawyers earn less than 20,000 euros per year. At 33 and after seven years of collaboration, the young lawyer has just gone into debt to buy her own office. And if she does not hear hanging up, she notes a growing concern among her colleagues. “Around me, there are more and more people who are seriously thinking about retraining. They say it is better to do it now to limit the damage. "
Aid to the most disadvantaged in danger
Even beyond their retirement, it is a vision of the profession that the strikers put forward: the increase in contributions jeopardizes the defense of the most precarious. "Small firms will no longer be able to devote the same time to legal aid [compensation is unimportant, whatever the investment on the file], it is the right to fair justice, the very basis of our democracy , which is threatened, ”deplores Meriem Ghenim, a lawyer for eight years at Bagnolet. And to recall that in Seine-Saint-Denis, 70% of litigants are eligible for this aid. "We are going towards judicial deserts similar to the medical desert", continues the lawyer.
What will the profession look like in a few years, if the pension reform is adopted? This is what worries the representatives of the profession. "This reform will create such inequalities that people will leave the profession, others will not even want to enter it," worries Christiane Fehral-Schul, president of the National Council of Bars which represents 70,000 lawyers in France. "It is frightening to say that despite long and difficult studies, we risk being precarious," says Mathilde, 25, who has not yet passed the black dress.
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- Strike
- Paris
- Pension reform
- Justice
- Lawyer