Some clients make him feel a slave lawyer

One morning in which I was traveling along an avenue in the center of Seville I found my friend and companion Francisco Rodríguez with his Gray Marengo cross suit, the black and very repeated briefcase.

He greeted me effusively and invited me to drink coffee.When he asked me if I had already registered at the Bar Association, I confessed that I dreamed of it but intended to finish my work period in an insurance company as a commercial inspector.

He encouraged me to exercise as a lawyer as soon as possible and exposed me euphorically several of the advantages that our beautiful profession had.

He had a free schedule, he had no boss, if he wanted to have a coffee with a friend he didn't have to give explanations to anyone, he took the cases that seemed good and paid properly;He rejected customers who did not respect or intended to send in him, chose the rest days of him and something very important: he was doing very well and earned six times more than me than me.

When I left the cafeteria and said goodbye to my lawyer friend, I looked again at the visiting card I had given me with the registration "Francisco Rodríguez Linares, lawyer".

I wanted to be like Paco Rodríguez, I wanted to leave the insurance company and be in the forum, as I had already decided even before studying the law career.

I had prepared for it attending judgments in the courts during my studies, I had made an internship in the fifth course and had followed the Forensic Practice Course.

And with the savings I had for my inspector's work, I could pay my high at the Bar Association and Printing to prepare my cards and file folders.

I returned to the insurer's office thinking about my friend the lawyer, elegant, happy and eating the world.

I was subjected to a schedule, although certainly flexible, I had to meet objectives, I had a boss, if I wanted.

The strength of a passion

But I wanted to be a liberal professional.

I wanted to be the criminal lawyer who had seen so many times in the American films skillfully questioning the witnesses before the jury and exposing a brilliant final allegation.

I wanted to put my toga before the criminal courts and defend my clients without fearing the high penalties that the prosecutor requests.

It was a passion that had to enter the exciting world of law.

Shortly after and because of those coincidences of life, I met my teacher Fernando Lazusta, who encouraged me to discharge me immediately and go through his firm that same afternoon because I had a lot of pending work and needed a hand.

Coincidentally, when I got to his office, his secretary was by machine writing a very high amount and he told me:

- Luis, so that you see the money that can be earned in this profession.

Certainly, the fees were considerable.My heroes were the lawyers like Fernando who enjoyed their profession and could lead their lives without anyone who gave them orders.

One of the first books that I bought on the profession was “Advocacy and Lawyers” by José María Martínez Val, still serving as a reference many of his advice and reflections, often opening pages underlined more than thirty years ago.

What I liked the most about advice was freedom.I, although I exercised as an intern in the aforementioned firm, from the first day I opened my own office in my town;Receiving my first clients who enthusiasticly and proudly delivered my professional card, listened carefully while consulted the Criminal or Civil Code, I took detailed notes by hand and naturally informed them of the cost of my services.

When they commissioned me a lawsuit or a defense, I took a folder with my name registered on the cover, I wrote down the name of the client, the matter and the file number;I ordered the notes and documents inside, subsequently drawing the strategy to follow.

When I established myself at all on my own, a few months later I received a mother and a sister of a young man who was in provisional prison for a crime of attempted murder, for having repeatedly hit with her motorcycle helmet to another young man in the head, being in serious condition.

Not having requested very high fees, I soon realized that they were too low for "the can" that they were giving me.

Shortly after having hired me and seeing that days later I had not yet left their relative of the jail, they waited for me one morning on the portal of the building where I had located my first firm, happening that the breakfast I had just consumed in the bar ofNext to me it was indigestible to see that the day started with an unbelieving visit.

Already up, at that meeting imposed, they questioned me about the day his brother or son was going to leave, as his consanguinene was asked or who brought him into the world.

I replied that I had already presented my writing requesting provisional freedom even if it was bail and we were waiting for the judge's decision, whom he had also visited.

My first resignation writing

They talked to me both almost very nervous insisting again and again that the prison.

And no matter how much I patiently heard them and the various explanations and commitments on my part, a few hours later they called me on the phone or requested a new appointment, when a few hours before we had met surprisingly.

And so over and over again.

A few weeks later, I was aware that to maintain my independence and my freedom, I owed these clients to invite my firm forever to abandon, writing my first writing of renunciation of a defense, which as I remembered having read in the General Statute of the AdvocacyAnd in our deontological code, I did not have to explain the cause of this abandonment, although it could have been illustrated to the judge who resigned by the exaggerated insistence of both ladies day and day not.

Although the first years are very exciting for a lawyer, we soon become aware that those of which we depend to succeed in our profession, our clients, can also become the cause of unpleasant experiences, of bitterness on days that should be happyAnd of aciagos moments in which we do not understand how that lessee of our services does not perceive our delivery and has no more patience waiting for a result that we are not obliged but of course we intend.

One day we say "Well, he has called several times in a few days, but he will stop calling and will wait for me to call him", another day we think "well, today he has appeared here without an appointment and made me lose an hour, arrivingAt home later, I had to finish a resource, "or" I have religiously paid the minute and that is why I must endure your insistent questions on the same topic ".

We also dig "you will get tired, you will have other things to do!".

I have remembered these days that image shaking the hand of my friend Paco Rodríguez, a lawyer of the illustrious school in Seville, when I enthusiastically encouraged the lawyer of lawyer because some beautiful experiences were waiting for me.

FREEDOM

I wanted to have my own schedule, freely choose my vacation, earn money, and above all, walk along the happy street like my colleague, grabbing the briefcase with several files of my cases and a list of my first clients.

I wanted to meet friends and acquaintances who asked me what I dedicated to answering them with a wide smile:

- I am a lawyer!

And I could enter the courts greeting other colleagues who at that time would know since I was a lawyer and very soon they would see me with the toga by the door of a view room.

He would go down to the Cafeteria de los Courts, in those years invaded by the thick smoke of hundreds of cigarettes sustained in the hands of judges, prosecutors, lawyers, clients, experts, officials, forensic doctors and other inveterate smokers smoking.

Waiting for someone between that crowd covered by the tobacco smoke fog told me:

- Man, Luis!Have you already registered?!! Congratulations!!.

After having coffee or beer, I would go to the Bar Association Library, to select a volume of Aranzadi and consult possible sentences that illustrated me in one of my new cases.

However, when you least expect it, you are surprised by a client who believes that for having hired you also fulfilling your payment obligation, you can send in you giving you more or less precise orders, control your work and even your agenda and the way of living.

He warns you that you have not yet answered your attentive "WhatsApp" - which you have already read, however - that you have not sent a copy of the last letter, that your secretary has not given him an appointment for that same afternoon, and that on Saturday youI apologize for calling you in order to illustrate important and unplazable attachments.

A few weeks ago, a client hired and ordered me to transfer from his account to that of my professional society just the amount that had been determined on the commissioning sheet.

He believed that I was already the owner of my time and my freedom, sending messages to my mobile with a record that made me remember that this client was enjoying a work leave that allowed him to enjoy enough free time.

A burden

I was his main entertainment and that morning in which I had informed him that I was going to visit the court to interest me for his file and talk to the judge - if he gave me the honor of receiving me - he wrote to me before arriving at my destinyIn a somewhat apart from my office, letting me know that I was already next to the court of the court and allowing me to ask about the approximate time in which I would arrive at the judicial building.

Well, he was already there!

I should not take the mobile and less read it when my hands had to be behind the wheel and I attentive to the road and its circumstances.

Therefore, it was the companion of my office that accompanied me who informed me of the many WhatsApp messages that in my mobile they were arriving with questions from this man so interested in the most nimios details of my scheduled hearing in the court: thatIf he had sat on the bank that was a few meters from the court door on the sidewalk in front, that if I should park in the "parking" that was very close to the court (about five hundred meters).

Because there could not be stopped on the street, to park my car on the third floor.Because the first two were already complete.That he had already told the civil guard of the entrance that his lawyer was about to arrive.And that if he knew if the judge had already returned to drink coffee.

That he thought he had seen the opposite lawyer entering a few moments and he had greeted a very enthusiastic official because they would surely be friends.Would this affection influence our lawsuit?

How many kilometers I had left to enter the town, that it wouldn't take long because that parking lot would soon run out of free squares soon.That at any time the judge could leave and not return!

I will not continue listing the profuse communications of this client in the following days, who by the way had not put any repair in my fees that I thought I calculated well and were not low.

But I do want to reveal that I have had to warn this good man that whoever makes the last decision is the lawyer and not the client, because for that he has entrusted me with his matter and it is the lawyer who determines the efforts and way of proceeding, the rhythm ofits actions and other extremes related to the confident case, assuming, of course, the responsibility that is necessary.

And finally, that the lawyer is free for all that and even, to give up his defense if necessary.

We do not sometimes realize that we are deviating from those purposes that we assume those days of the early days of our career in which we really felt free, making us now slaves of some sponsored ours that most or less diplomatically illustrating us on theStrategy to follow, that send corrections or additions to our writings, which provide more and more documentation, that believe they have another or other new evidence, which refer us jurisprudence that they have found in Google or the applicable legislation according to an article that they have just readIn a prestigious digital legal magazine, or some paragraphs of a form that have bought online.

And there we have it again, in front of us, that afternoon in which this time we have given him an appointment on his own initiative and a knot is done in our throat when he so politely asks us how we are and how are things going, not beingable to tell you that the reason for the meeting is to communicate our resignation.

Do we leave the case now that we have already done the most important?

Will we lose being present in the next procedural acts?

Will we be absent from the trial?

Will we no longer communicate that sentence that we trust is favorable?

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