It would be their honour and perhaps their glory

La basoche is boiling: lawyers and notaries to scream; each of these professions said his to other stark and the nails in the pillory. Devil, what happens in a generally more polished universe

The charivari is derived from legislation, by a parliamentary majority, which would create, in our venerable civil Code, a new legal instrument: the Act of counsel, private act and the notarial deed. According to this project, lawyers would now empowered to write, countersign and keep legal acts.

To the author of the Act, it would be a progress because the lawyers would now be required to control the identity and the ability of the parties. This argument cannot be accepted. Currently, a lawyer, editor of private acts, cannot dispense with perform this audit under penalty of its professional liability in game.

The proponent of this idea suggests another argument: this amendment of the civil Code would establish more easily the liability of a solicitor. It cannot be accepted: it is sufficient to browse collections of case law to see that the courts did not wait this reform to condemn a lawyer guilty of an error or misconduct in the drafting of a contract.

According to the author of this project, with this reform, the lawyer would become responsible for conservation of acts drafted by his care during a non-specific term. Here, there is an innovation. Today, the lawyer, editor of contract, is required to retain a copy or an original. It has a significant progress to the public, to be welcomed.

However, one wonders if the creation by the law society to service individual or collective of archives, with its procession of operating costs (of the order of 1 of turnover), control over the method of conservation, is fully compatible with the necessary independence.

The editor of the project advances another argument for his thesis: the reform would require the lawyer to check "where appropriate, the origin of the funds". It is, not an innovation for the bar, but a revolution. Indeed, to this day, it is still refused to apply identical to that of the notarial rules in the fight against terrorism and money laundering. Also, in 2008, the law society filed three statements of Tracfin suspicion against... 350 by the notary. This reform appears to be litter this traditional policy of the law society. Is this not dangerous, ultimately to its independence Does not put it, pernicious way, under the authority of the State It is permissible to question.

Finally, the statement of the reasons for this project makes a compelling argument: now, the new Act of counsel would benefit from enhanced probative force. This, in fact, the only true novation. What is its meaning and its scope In clear, means, inter alia, that the date range on the Act of counsel will very hardly, be challenged by the parties to this Act. But dating is of counsel Editor. To justify this privilege, prohibits the simple act under private and so far only authentic acts, public authorities would be obliged to put in place a system of editorial control of the acts written by lawyers, comparable, if not identical to that of the notarial profession. However, would this control not the beginning of the end of the independence of the bar Is it not pernicious procedures for this profession

Then, in the end, this project, a gadget or a legal revolution Neither one nor the other. Simply, an inadequate response to a good question: the need to reform judicial and legal professions. Rather than to propose this reform, which does not match or at the request of the public, nor to the interests of the bar, or the interests of the State, to the evolution of morals, or the need for regulation of the company, not is it not better propose modernization, the opening, the mutation of the notarial profession by imaginative, drastic and historical measures Rather than believe reform to assume the two evils suffered by the law society: increasing impoverishment and uncontrolled increase of its membership, is not better propose a reform of the content and methods of training and selection of law professionals, and a total redesign of the funding of legal aid Instead of bring to the Pinnacle or dedicate to the same project that "not worth this excess of honour nor this indignity." The bar and notary would be better to design this type of alternative understandable by the public. It would be their honour and perhaps their glory...