In times of crisis like the one we are going through, the Administration of Justice needs to make a greater effort to ensure access so that no one is left out.

Access will be promoted two-directionally: strengthening rights and ensuring their exercise. These two lines of work are realized in two sub-projects:

1.    Efficient system of Free Legal Aid and Public Defenders so as to broaden its scope of application and boost its quality.

This effort must be transformed into structural improvements. On the one hand, the incorporation of Means of Appropriate Dispute Resolution (ADR) as part of the public defender and free justice systems, which until now were only associated with the judicial field.

On the other hand, to implement a quality model that improves professionals’ service delivery. Thereby ensuring a training, access and remuneration system which is adequate. A model that will define an incentive system which promotes quality.

Finally, it is necessary to review access to legal aid for legal persons and to introduce control mechanisms to prevent improper access. Free justice should focus on the most vulnerable.

2- Law on the right to counsel. 

The right to counsel is an essential pillar in the configuration of our model of Justice and is recognized in Article 24 of the Constitution. It covers the set of legal guarantees and powers that assist those who are part of a judicial process, allowing them to effectively defend their legitimate interests and thereby satisfy their right to effective judicial protection. It is an unavoidable instrument to avoid defenselessness and to guarantee real equality between the parties to the proceedings.

The regulations that delimit its content are dispersed, which makes it difficult to comprehensively understand it and exercise the right. It is necessary to address the creation of a coherent and integral regulation that gathers all the aspects contemplated by this right in the same legal text. A law that regulates the elements of the Right to Counsel that affect the professional performance of legal operators, the processing of proceedings and citizens' access to justice.

The text has to address an ethics area, ensuring the limits of the practice of law; the procedural ones: ensuring the right to counsel throughout the judicial process, and the welfare: incorporating free legal aid and the public defender’s office.