Justice proposes that the maternity leave of lawyers be a reason to suspend trials

The Administration of Justice continues to take steps in favor of conciliation. The Ministry led by Pilar Llop has agreed to end the legal vacuum that left lawyers unprotected after giving birth. After months of negotiations with the General Council of Lawyers, the latest draft of the Procedural Efficiency Law – which still has to be analyzed by the Council of State and follow the parliamentary process – includes the possibility of suspending trials and procedural deadlines for lawyers and lawyers during the six weeks after childbirth, which is the period that coincides with the compulsory work rest established according to labor and social security legislation.

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So far, the rules that govern trials and procedural deadlines do not clearly contemplate maternity and paternity as a reason for suspension or postponement. Lawyers – and especially female lawyers – are left to the discretion of the sensibilities of the lawyers in the administration of justice, the judicial body or the judges themselves. Yours is the decision to accept or not your requests for suspension, since it is not a fact specifically included in the laws, it depends on its interpretation. This situation has given rise to public denunciations of lawyers forced to attend trials on the days of giving birth.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Justice confirms to elDiario.es that in the latest revision of the regulation, a series of "measures to reconcile personal, family and work life" have been introduced for lawyers, prosecutors and social graduates in the modifications foreseen in the Law of Criminal Procedure, the Law of Civil Procedure and the Regulatory Law of the Social Jurisdiction.

Sources familiar with the content of these negotiations specify that these measures include a modification of the Civil Procedure Law so that, in cases of birth, lawyers "who have been granted maternity or paternity leave may request the suspension of the procedure , and therefore of all the acts and procedural deadlines in progress, for the period coinciding with the mandatory rest period established according to the labor and social security legislation" and that said suspension thus requested "will affect all the procedures in which the professional person of the legal profession in question". In relation to the Workers' Statute and the Public Employee Statute, this period is set at six weeks.

This level of detail represents an advance with respect to the current wording of the Civil Procedure Law, which establishes that there will only be a suspension of trials in the event of "death, illness or absolute impossibility or maternity or paternity leave" when the Administration Lawyer of Justice understands that this request is justified "sufficiently". Nor does it specify, as the new regulation does, that the suspension will affect "all procedures" in which the lawyer intervenes.

The lawyer Auxiliadora Borja, representative of the General Council of Lawyers in the negotiations with Justice, admits that in this latest draft not all the requests of her group are included, but she does represent an "unprecedented achievement". For example, Borja affirms that she would have liked the text to make express mention of the situation of mutual lawyers who do not have Social Security leave as such, although the mutual has the obligation to provide the same benefit as in the self-employed regime. .

These professionals are self-employed and, instead of being self-employed, they are registered in an alternative system to Social Security through the two existing mutual insurance companies. However, the representative of the General Council of Lawyers affirms that the "commitment" of the Ministry is that mutualists are also included by providing birth documentation. "It is understood that the suspension during the work rest period set by Social Security affects everyone," she maintains.

At the moment there are no suspensions of trials and deadlines for pregnant women in the days or weeks prior to childbirth, despite having a rest order. The Bar considers it "fundamental" to include this right, which could become a reality if their request for suspension were fulfilled for the "indispensable and necessary" time in cases of serious illness, accident or hospitalization of the lawyer. grant maternity leave, but for temporary disability that, according to Borja, could enter into this assumption.

court protocols

Professional organizations have been mobilizing for some time to end the legal vacuum that discriminates against lawyers after giving birth. At the request of the Balearic Bar Association, the High Court of Justice of the Balearic Islands agreed at the end of 2019 to implement a protocol that establishes, for lawyers, the suspension of judicial acts in the ten days prior to the expected date of delivery and during the subsequent sixty; and, for lawyers, for the next thirty. Regarding the procedural deadlines, it states that in cases of pregnancy, the suspension for lawyers be established between the twenty days before and the twenty after the date of delivery.

These same measures were proposed by the Bar Association of A Coruña to the Superior Court of Justice of the Balearic Islands, which decided to submit them to the criteria of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ). At its meeting last Thursday, the Permanent Commission of the governing body of the judges agreed to commission its technical cabinet a report on the "content" of this protocol that is committed to shielding the right to conciliation of this group. However, these protocols were a kind of patch submitted to the "approval" of the person in charge of the corresponding TSJ, says lawyer Auxiliadora Borja. "Our goal is to change the procedural laws of all jurisdictions and for this to be unified into an organic law that is equally valid for everyone," she says.