"Many lawyers anticipated the undesired effect of the 'only yes is yes' law and they were ignored"

Following their election victories in December, the Madrid Bar Association (ICAM) has had a dean and vice-dean, respectively, in the 48-year-old Eugenio Ribón of Cadiz and the 59-year-old Isabel Winkels of Madrid since this January. This time around they teamed up after running in the prior elections on opposing lists.

The previous board of directors, presided over by José Mara Alonso, included Ribón, who has experience in consumer protection. Family law attorney Winkels practices in this area.

Both sides are committed to having the legal profession actively participate in the "making of laws" in order to "Warn of those undesired effects," despite the heated debate surrounding the reform of the embezzlement crime and the lowering of sentences for sexual offenders following the implementation of the law of only yes is yes. It's a question.

Less than 8% of eligible voters participated in these elections, which is comparable to indoor voting. Winkels, how do they interpret it.

We anticipated that it would be significantly larger this year. However, it was a miserable, rainy day.

ribon. There is objective data and no justification of any kind for why participation should not be increased.

At 1:00 p. m.

17 points had been added to it. It had, after all, gone off.

Then it is accurate to say that a great flood occurred. Q.

Apart from that situation, however, participation is always extremely low. Do you conduct additional research? ribon.

It is necessary to streamline the electoral process. Also to be considered is the fact that more than 10,000 of the ICAM's members are from outside the country, and traveling from Barcelona or Bilbao to vote requires a commendable amount of effort.

However, the vote-by-mail system needs to be updated and renovated because it is out-of-date and complicated. The implementation of telematic voting, for example, necessitates the holding of an extraordinary general assembly, which in times of crisis is particularly challenging given that we are dealing with a school with 70,000 students. These things also imply a statutory modification.

These statutes will need to be modified within these five Winkels years, and a draft has already been approved for that purpose. We need to consider how to connect the lawyer with everything that ICAM does because there is an endemic disconnect.

For the simple reason that I'm sick of hearing in these elections that "The school does not contribute anything to me, their emails reach me in spam.". " Q.

What additional alterations would you like to make? ribon. We desire a more prominent role for the legal community in public life as an actor.

Practically speaking, the legal profession is the first to identify the deficits that affect citizens. Furthermore, being a partner in the process of drafting standards requires that early detection be applied.

Because of this, institutional relations will be one of the areas that will be significantly strengthened. Q.

In other words, they raised the prospect of taking part in public discourse more frequently. ribon.

The college can offer the added benefit of technical expertise that is qualified and has been researching the standard for decades. It must serve as the watchdog for the rule of law and the protection of rights.

The legislator will need to pass legislation because there is a separation of powers, which is a blessing. However, the institution of higher learning also has a social duty.

Q. Entering a specific discussion, Winkels asks if there will be reduced punishments for corruption following the reform of the embezzlement crime.

The law, in my opinion, sought to accomplish that. The idea is that we are in the process of making laws and noticing those undesired effects, and that in an ideal world, we should be heard before. The law of yes is yes has already had an undesirable effect that, by the way, many lawyers advanced and they were ignored.

As a result, this effect was not sought, but it has nonetheless happened according to the law of yes and yes. Furthermore, this law's goal is to lessen [penalties], so I assume the authors are aware that this will be one of the results.

Q. The elimination of the issue of unrestricted assistance for legal entities is one of his campaign's demands.

ribon. We are dealing with an urgent issue in this situation that cannot wait.

Public defenders are chosen because the law acknowledges that legal persons are subject to criminal liability. However, the Law on Free Legal Aid has not been changed, so even if they are in need of it, they are not eligible for it and the State is not responsible for paying for public defenders.

A lawyer cannot be told that they won't pay him after being ordered to serve a six-month sentence at the National Court, which requires him to leave his office and risk endangering his family. A mortgage, children, and an electricity contract are all held by that person.

This specific issue—the attorneys chosen to represent the Gürtel case—has already given rise to a disagreement with the Ministry of Justice. What took place there? ribon.

What actually happened was that a deal was made with the ministry to create the legal support that the courts required. It took dozens of coworkers months to study the causes contained in thousands of extremely complex pages after they were appointed.

Afterwards, the ministry changed its mind and requested a reimbursement for the money it had already paid to those colleagues for their services. The judicialized conflict is already present there.

However, there won't be any lawyers available if we do that with everything. When they ask us for lawyers, if you don't put yourself forward as an urgent solution, we will respond, "Look, here is the list, call whoever you want, whoever you can convince, because there is no way to send a professional in those conditions" . Q.

Which other areas would you like to exert more control over? ribon. In conciliation, as an illustration.

It is not required that the hearing be postponed if a coworker has a trial scheduled concurrently with the operation on his son. P.

But in reality, the judges are the ones in charge of that situation. How might that issue be resolved? ribon.

Obliquely defining [the causes] is what you need to do. that it is independent of the decision of a particular judge.

Winkels. Will Ribón be of good or bad?.

We cannot continue to run the risk of a judge ruling, for instance, that the mother can go to court because the father is already in the child's life, despite the fact that common sense typically rules in the vast majority of judicial bodies. Q.

Which courts are convenient to use and which are a nightmare to get into is a matter of general consensus among attorneys. Do they possess the knowledge and resources necessary to create a kind of x-ray or barometer?.

One of the projects we will create is the evaluation of each court on an individual basis, which will then be reported to the court, the dean judge, the General Council of the Judiciary, the Community of Madrid, and the ministry. And that must be assessed by the organizations that decide whether to promote particular officials or not.

In order for people to be aware of it, we will also publish it. The reason being that if a court receives 500 Winkels claims, serious problems may arise.

Alternatively, if one judge-signaling process takes twice as long as the other. ribon.

First and foremost, it is important to recognize that the legal profession is not merely a collaborator of the Justice Administration but rather a component of it. There cannot be a trial directly without advocacy.

Additionally, authorities serve the people, not the other way around. Governments are not the masters or vassals of the people. Additionally, we have gone backwards significantly since the Covid era: trenches have been built in front of the people in the administrations.

Requesting an appointment with the Social Security Administration, the Tax Agency, or a court seemed like a gymkhana. Submission and vassalage were the order of the day.

And after 2.5 years, the trenches are still being debated in some court. Q.

the length of the legal proceedings, the lack of digitization, and the use of various computer programs by the autonomous communities, some of which are incompatible with one another. Is a lack of funding or partisan politics the primary cause of the judicial system's dysfunction?.

Politics is manifestly lacking in motivation. There are other factors besides money.

When putting certain plans into action, resources and money are both important. But oftentimes, what is less expensive is what is more valuable.

It shows a lack of will when a duty colleague visits a police station at three in the morning where parking is available and then has to find a parking space four blocks away and travel to a location with some degree of insecurity. No one considers the possibility that a medical professional might be instructed to park their car and walk with the defibrillator.

Institutional cooperation and loyalty must be demanded; a simple fact like leaving room is an example. Q.

Mr. Ribón, who or what exactly was he referring to when you asked the members of the audience during the debate with the other candidates for dean whether they preferred a list of "people who already knew this" or another of those who came to promote themselves professionally or politically?. That anxiety may be present in various forms.

None of us possesses the ambition-driven zeal that one may have glimpsed in another candidate when it comes to our own candidacy. Without taking into account the fact that we must work for the rest of our lives, we have been fortunate enough to assemble a team in which nearly everyone has a successful professional career.

Winkels. The goal is to share the knowledge we have been gathering, observing, and detecting throughout our careers.

My profession is family law, to be more precise. My objective is to achieve specialization in family courts, with a specialized prosecutor and an attached technical team.

Here is where you can sign up for our daily Madrid newsletter. In our runs, we are observing and detecting.

My profession is family law, to be more precise. My objective is to achieve specialization in family courts, with a specialized prosecutor and an attached technical team.

Here is where you can sign up for our daily Madrid newsletter. In our runs, we are observing and detecting.

My profession is family law, to be more precise. My objective is to achieve specialization in family courts, with a specialized prosecutor and an attached technical team.

Here is where you can sign up for our daily Madrid newsletter.

Both sides are committed to having the legal profession actively participate in the "making of laws" in order to "Warn of those undesired effects," despite the heated debate surrounding the reform of the embezzlement crime and the lowering of sentences for sexual offenders following the implementation of the law of only yes is yes.