There is no shortage of lawyers on the Zuidas in Amsterdam. The many prestigious offices that sit there attract hundreds of new lawyers every year. The working days are long, but the reward in the form of salary and training is therefore there. Not in the social law. Very long working days are made there, but without a nice office and often against a barely adequate income.
It is therefore not surprising that there are fewer and fewer social lawyers in the Netherlands. According to the Dutch Bar Association, the Decrease 9 percent in the last five years. And that while the total number of lawyers in that period increased. On Monday another report was published that warned of this development and argued for extra money to make the profession more attractive.
Without social lawyers, the rule of law is at stake. This group of lawyers provides subsidized legal aid to people with a low income. When that possibility is lost, the risk is that people with a weaker starting position are ground in the system. The allowance affair, in which thousands of people often had to repay money to the government outside their debt, is a dire example of this. And also the evidence that cheap often turns out to be expensive. The proceeds from earlier cutbacks of the Rutte cabinets on the legal aid disappear against the ever-increasing costs of the years of recovery operation for the surcharges victims.
Currently, 23 percent of the legal profession works as a social lawyer. That doesn’t sound dramatic yet. But it is precisely in this profession, where too few people now work to process the 350,000 annual applications, the aging population strikes hard. Nowhere do so many young people drop out as in social law, wrote NRC Last week. In 2024, 307 stopped, more than half of whom younger than 35 years. According to the Constitution, everyone is entitled to legal aid, but in some regions there is no longer even a social lawyer within a radius of one hundred kilometers.
The aging population is a direct consequence of the method of financing, with each case receiving a number of points and a maximum of declarable hours. With more complex cases – and that is quickly the case – the lawyer has to make many unpaid hours. In order to come up with a decent income, social lawyers have to take on many cases. They also save on costs by, for example, not maintaining an office, but working from home. These single -citters have no time or room to take on lawyers – the three -year process that every lawyer has to go through. And so the inflow dries further and further.
The young lawyer who does not choose the Zuidas, but wants to commit himself to the weak in society, is therefore not going to work. In the latest report from the Van der Meer committee, it is (again) argued for more money from the cabinet for the sector, especially to prevent more social lawyers as a self-employed person without an office. But then the offices on the Zuidas must also take responsibility for this colleagues indispensable for society. For example, by offering them free rent and office support. The rule of law deserves it.